Supreme Court Accidentally Posts Opinion Appearing to Dismiss Idaho’s Appeal of Emergency Abortions

The Supreme Court accidentally posted and subsequently removed a highly anticipated opinion from its website on Wednesday, indicating Idaho’s appeal of two cases involving emergency abortions will be dismissed.

The decision, which pits Idaho’s near-total abortion ban against a federal law that would require hospitals in the state to perform emergency abortions to save the life of the mother, would reinstate two lower courts’ orders that let the federal measure move forward, Bloomberg News reported. The posted version indicated the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in the pair of cases, with conservative-leaning Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissenting.

A copy of the opinion was “inadvertently and briefly uploaded” online, a Supreme Court spokesperson said, confirming it has not been officially released yet. “The Court’s opinion in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States will be issued in due course.”

The document is expected to be released within the coming days, as the Supreme Court is nearing the end of its term in early July. This week, Thursday and Friday are marked as additional opinion days.

Once formally released, the opinion would place the lower-court rulings on hold while litigation brought by Idaho and the state’s Republican house speaker, Mike Moyle, proceeds. It also means that the core issues in either case would remain unresolved.

Idaho was one of the first states to ban abortion following the Supreme Court’s landmark reversal of Roe v. Wade in June 2022. The state is also one of six that doesn’t allow exceptions if a mother undergoes a health risk that doesn’t threaten her life.

The Justice Department then sued Idaho over the ban alleged to be in violation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires Medicaid-participating hospitals to provide emergency treatment to patients who need it. Meanwhile, Idaho argued the federal law “does not require emergency rooms to become abortion enclaves in violation of state law.” The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in April.

Idaho law allows abortions in cases of rape and incest or when the medical procedure is necessary to prevent the mother’s death. In addition to criminalizing most abortions, the near-total ban authorizes the arrest of doctors who perform abortions in emergency settings. Physicians who violate the ban could be punished with two to five years in prison.

Similar to the accidental upload, a draft of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion was leaked to Politico one month ahead of its official release two years ago. The leak prompted an investigation by the Supreme Court, which was unable to identify the person responsible.

“The leak was no mere misguided attempt at protest. It was a grave assault on the judicial process,” the Court said in January 2023, in conjunction with releasing a 20-page report of the investigation.

“No one confessed to publicly disclosing the document and none of the available forensic and other evidence provided a basis for identifying any individual as the source of the document,” the report read. “All personnel who had access to the draft opinion signed sworn affidavits affirming they did not disclose the draft opinion nor know anything about who did.”