WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court admitted on Wednesday that it accidentally put online a document about an ongoing abortion case. Bloomberg Law was able to get a copy of the document before it was taken down.
Patricia McCabe, a spokeswoman for the Supreme Court, confirmed that a document was “inadvertently and briefly uploaded” to the court website. She also said that the order “has not been released.”
Bloomberg also put up a copy of the paper. NBC News could not check the paper on its own. Nobody is sure if it was a written decision, a real decision, or neither.
A copy of the ruling from Bloomberg said that the court seems likely to let emergency room doctors in Idaho perform abortions in some situations. Bloomberg said that the court is likely to throw out the case that the Idaho government filed.
In this way, the court would let an earlier decision that sided with the Biden administration take effect again.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissenting decision, and two other conservatives, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, joined him. They said the case should not have been thrown out by the court.
In January, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision and agreed to hear oral arguments. This meant that Idaho could fully enforce its abortion rule. Other parts of the ban are already in place, and the decision would not change those.
The case is about whether a federal law that controls care in emergency rooms is stronger than Idaho’s strict abortion ban. The legal question would not be answered if the court throws out the case.
Bloomberg posted a document that says Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately to say that the court should have decided the bigger issue. This issue is likely to come up in another case in the future and would have an effect on other states that have abortion restrictions like Idaho’s.
“Today’s decision is not good news for Idaho women who are pregnant. The paper says that she wrote, “It is delay.” “The country is waiting while this court drags its feet. In the meantime, pregnant women with serious health problems are in danger because their doctors don’t know what the law says.”
In a separate ruling, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the court had made a “miscalculation” by hearing the case before an appeals court could weigh in. This is why she would vote to throw out the case. She also said that part of the confusion came from the fact that both sides changed their legal positions when the case got to the high court.
According to Idaho law, anyone who performs an abortion can be charged with a crime and face up to five years in jail. If a healthcare worker is caught breaking the rule, they could lose their license.
The federal government sued, and in August 2022, a federal judge stopped the state from implementing parts of the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act that require medical care.
The law from 1986 says that people who go to the emergency room must get the right care. The Biden government said that women should be able to get abortions when their health is in danger, even if death is not imminent.
As its term comes to an end, the Supreme Court will make decisions on Thursday and Friday. The abortion case is one of 12 that have been argued but have not yet been settled.
