The Supreme Court is poised to allow emergency abortions in Idaho, according to a copy of an opinion briefly posted on the Supreme Court’s website and reported on by Bloomberg News.

What You Need To Know

  • The Supreme Court is poised to allow emergency abortions in Idaho, according to a copy of an opinion briefly posted on the Supreme Court’s website and reported on by Bloomberg News

  • According to Bloomberg, the document, which was quickly removed from the high court’s website, says that in a 6-3 decision, the court will dismiss the case as improvidently granted — meaning that the high court decided it should not have taken the case

  • It also says that it will reinstate an order that allowed hospitals to provide emergency abortions to protect a woman’s health

  • The Biden administration sued Idaho over its abortion ban – which says performing the procedure is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison, save for a few exceptions –  two years ago, saying that hospitals must provide emergency abortions if a patient's health is at risk

The case involved a federal law known as Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires that all Medicare-participating hospitals provide emergency services regardless of ability to pay, and an Idaho abortion restriction which says that performing the procedure is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison, outside of very narrow exceptions.

The Biden administration sued Idaho over its abortion ban two years ago, saying that hospitals must provide emergency abortions if a patient's health is at risk, even in non-life-threatening instances.

The case could resolve major questions about providing emergency abortions in states that have severely restricted, or banned outright, abortions in the aftermath of the high court overturning Roe v. Wade two years ago.

According to Bloomberg, the document, which was quickly removed from the high court’s website, says that in a 6-3 decision, the court will dismiss the case as improvidently granted — meaning that the high court decided it should not have taken the case. It also says that it will reinstate an order that allowed hospitals to provide emergency abortions to protect a woman’s health.

The 6-3 ruling would split the court along its ideological fault lines: Per the document, liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson would be joined by conservative Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch are set to dissent.

If dismissed, the case would continue at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Spectrum News has not reviewed the document, and it’s unclear whether it is a draft opinion or the final one. The high court acknowledged that a document was posted inadvertently on its website.

“The Court’s Publications Unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the Court’s website,” Patricia McCabe, a spokesperson for the court, said in a statement. “The Court’s opinion in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States will be issued in due course.”

It would be the second major ruling on abortion since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which reversed Roe, the landmark 1973 case that guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion nationwide. Earlier this month, the high court unanimously rejected a challenge to widely used abortion medication mifepristone, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval of the drug.

The release of the document hearkens back to the release of a draft of the Dobbs decision a month before the high court officially handed down the ruling.

The Supreme Court will next issue decisions on Thursday and Friday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.