US Supreme Court error appears to reveal setback for Idaho abortion ban

The US Supreme Court appears poised to authorise emergency abortions in the state of Idaho, according to a document published erroneously online Wednesday in the latest mishap involving a high-profile case over reproductive rights.

The apparent draft opinion briefly published to the court’s website, which was downloaded and shared by Bloomberg, showed that a majority of the court’s nine justices had voted to reinstate a lower-court ruling that blocked a near-total ban on abortions in Idaho.

The filing said the Idaho case should be dismissed as “improvidently granted”, a rare reversal of the court’s decision to hear the case in the first place. 

It is unclear whether the document is the final version of the decision. A Supreme Court spokesperson said the court had “inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document” to its website, but that the opinion in the Idaho case “has not been released” and would be “issued in due course”.

The Supreme Court handed down two decisions earlier on Wednesday and is set to release more later this week as it nears the end of its term.

The incident appears to be the second time in as many years that a draft ruling on the question of abortion has been unveiled prematurely, heightening the tension surrounding some of the most divisive cases on the Supreme Court’s docket.

Politico in 2022 published a draft opinion in Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which took the big step of overturning Roe vs Wade, the 1973 decision that had enshrined the constitutional right to an abortion for nearly 50 years. The court’s final opinion, released months later, was nearly identical to the leaked draft.

The unusual leak ignited a controversy that rattled the court and sparked public outrage. The person responsible has not been publicly identified.

If the Supreme Court ultimately allows emergency abortions in Idaho, it would be a win for President Joe Biden’s administration, which has railed against the high court for reversing Roe. Since the Dobbs decision gave states the authority to make their own laws on abortion, Republican-led states, including Idaho, have raced to impose ever-tighter restrictions on the procedure.

Democrats have turned abortion access into a major issue for the 2024 presidential campaign, painting Republicans — including Donald Trump, the former president who installed three of the justices who ruled to overturn Roe — as out of touch with the majority of Americans on the issue.

Just a few weeks ago the Supreme Court rejected a bid to restrict access to a drug used in more than half of the country’s abortions, thwarting another attempt to curb the procedure.

The Idaho case stems from a lawsuit filed by the US government against the state, arguing that its near-total abortion ban falls afoul of the federal Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act, which compels hospitals to provide stabilising treatment to patients in an emergency. 

“No one who comes to an emergency room in need of emergency medical care should be denied the treatment required to stabilise her condition,” the US government said in a court filing. “For some pregnant women suffering tragic emergency complications, the only care that can prevent grave harm to their health is termination of the pregnancy”.

A US district court blocked the Idaho law, and the ruling was ultimately upheld by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Supreme Court lifted the injunction and agreed to hear the case in January.