In an important victory for doctors challenging the Biden administration’s aggressive abortion-driven misreading of the federal law known as EMTALA (the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act), the Supreme Court today denied the Solicitor General’s petition for certiorari in Becerra v. Texas. The Court’s action leaves in place a strong Fifth Circuit ruling that held that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services unlawfully interpreted EMTALA to preempt narrower state-law definitions of the emergency medical conditions in which abortion is allowable and to require doctors to perform abortions in other circumstances.
In the aftermath of the Court’s disappointing decision in June to defer resolving the Biden administration’s EMTALA case against Idaho, the Solicitor General invited the Court to “GVR”—grant, vacate, and remand—its petition in the hope that the Fifth Circuit would conclude on remand that Texas lacks standing or that the injunction against HHS should be vacated or narrowed. The SG invoked the Court’s acceptance (in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine) of the government’s newfound litigating position that “EMTALA does not require doctors to perform abortions or provide abortion-related medical treatment over their conscience objections.” But the SG obscured the fact that HHS has never altered its original directive to accommodate doctors’ conscience objections.
The Court’s denial of certiorari means that HHS’s EMTALA mandate is permanently enjoined in Texas and is also permanently enjoined with respect to doctors who belong to the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists or to the Christian Medical & Dental Associations.