The Supreme Court ruled Friday to allow Idaho to maintain its strict abortion ban, pending a decision on the ongoing legal challenge. Justices will hear arguments in April.
The case is one of several which have received national attention in the wake of its 2022 overturning of Roe V. Wade, which allowed states to restrict or ban abortions. Other ongoing legal battles over abortion include a challenge to the FDA’s ruling on the abortion medication mifepristone, and multiple challenges in Texas over the alleged unclear definition of medical exceptions for abortions.
In the Idaho case, the Biden administration sued the state in August 2022 over its abortion trigger law, arguing that it conflicted with a 1986 federal law requiring hospitals that receive Medicare funds to provide emergency care. The administration argued that the federal law includes abortions outside of the Idaho law’s exception for abortions that would save the mother’s life.
The challenge has since pinballed through the court system. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction shortly after the Biden administration’s request. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals then ruled to allow Idaho to enforce the law, but the full court later reversed this and granted the Biden administration’s request while the appeal proceeds. The Supreme Court then granted Idaho’s request to lift the injunction, allowing them to enforce the law.
Idaho lawmakers contended in their appeal to the 9th Circuit Court that the order to block enforcement of the law is a “violation of both Idaho’s sovereignty and its traditional police power over medical practice.”
“The overturning of Roe v. Wade has enabled Republican elected officials to pursue dangerous abortion bans like this one that continue to jeopardize women’s health, force them to travel out of state for care, and make it harder for doctors to provide care, including in an emergency,” President Joe Biden said in a statement responding to the Friday decision. “These bans are also forcing doctors to leave Idaho and other states because of laws that interfere with their ability to care for their patients.
“We will continue to defend a woman’s ability to access emergency care under federal law.”
Separately, Idaho’s “abortion trafficking” law was temporarily blocked by a federal judge in November, pending a lawsuit challenging it. The law bars minors from traveling to get abortions in other states without parental permission. And similarly to Texas, Idaho is being sued by a group of doctors and women to clarify its definition of medical exceptions which would make an abortion legal.
