The Trump administration intends to drop a lawsuit filed by the previous administration that sought to permit Idaho healthcare practitioners to perform emergency abortions, a new court filing shows.
The court filing, which includes a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney’s email explaining the department’s intentions, came on March 4. On March 5 at 3 p.m., a federal district judge in Boise is scheduled to hear a motion from a healthcare system in a related case for a preliminary injunction allowing its physicians to perform emergency abortions in the state.
Idaho’s Defense of Life Act forbids abortions except when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman” or during the first trimester when the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest. Performing an abortion can lead to five years in prison and result in the revocation of a medical doctor’s license.
The federal government’s lawsuit, known as United States v. Idaho, was filed in U.S. District Court in Idaho in August 2022. The Biden administration, which left office on Jan. 20, took the position that federal policy on emergency healthcare should prevail over state-level abortion restrictions.
The case is about whether the state law conflicts with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which forbids so-called patient dumping, the practice of hospitals refusing emergency treatment to people who can’t afford to pay for medical services.
The Biden administration argued the Idaho law violates EMTALA, which requires that emergency room patients in hospitals that accept Medicare be provided stabilizing care. The previous administration argued stabilizing care included abortions. That administration also said that state-level abortion laws such as Idaho’s have confused patients and healthcare professionals and delayed critical care for pregnant women.
The Biden administration argued EMTALA requires hospitals in Idaho to provide emergency medical care, including abortions, to anyone who requests it.
U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill ruled in August 2022 that the Idaho law partly conflicts with EMTALA. The judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking Idaho from enforcing its state law “as applied to medical care required by” EMTALA. The state of Idaho and the Idaho Legislature asked Winmill to reconsider his ruling and in May 2023 the judge decided to leave the injunction in place.
In September 2023, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed Winmill’s decision, finding that EMTALA and the state statute didn’t conflict, but two months later, the court reinstated the judge’s order.
The full Ninth Circuit was preparing to rehear the case, but in January 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and granted Idaho’s request to lift the injunction, pending the outcome of the case at the high court.
Then in June 2024, the Supreme Court dismissed Idaho’s appeal against the Ninth Circuit ruling that granted an exception to the state’s strict abortion law for abortions deemed to be medical emergencies. The high court did not rule on the merits of the underlying lawsuit but its decision allowed emergency abortions to proceed in Idaho, while the challenge to the state’s abortion law moved through the lower courts.
Judge Winmill is scheduled on March 5 to hear a hospital network’s request for a temporary restraining order against the Idaho law in a related lawsuit known as St. Luke’s Health System Ltd. v. Labrador.
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