Supreme Court mistakenly posts draft opinion in Idaho abortion case online

The Supreme Court appeared to be ready to allow people in Idaho to get abortions in medical emergencies, despite the state’s strict abortion law, according to a court document that was briefly posted online Wednesday and obtained by Bloomberg Law.

The document indicates that the nation’s highest court will dismiss the case without ruling on its merits. The decision will kick the case back to lower courts and put back into place a preliminary injunction issued earlier by a district court.

“That will prevent Idaho from enforcing its abortion ban when the termination of a pregnancy is needed to prevent serious harms to a woman’s health,” Justice Elana Kagan wrote in a draft concurring opinion, according to Bloomberg.

After the 2022 fall of Roe v. Wade erased the constitutional right to abortion nationwide, Idaho barred people from getting the procedure unless it was necessary to prevent death. The federal government sued, arguing that the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act preempts state law and requires hospitals that receive Medicare to perform “necessary stabilizing treatment” like abortions when failing to do so would cause serious harm to a patient.

It was not clear Wednesday whether the court document mistakenly posted online would become official.

“The Court’s Publications Unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the Court’s website,” Supreme Court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe acknowledged in a statement obtained by The Washington Post. “The Court’s opinion in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States will be issued in due course.”

The incident marked the second time that an abortion-related decision from the Supreme Court was made public before it could be confirmed. In 2022, a draft of the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked weeks before the final opinion’s release.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed a lawsuit challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the key abortion drug mifepristone.

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