The Supreme Court has declined to weigh in on the Biden administration’s challenge of a Texas law on emergency abortion care.
The case focused on the legal conflict between the longstanding federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) and state laws that criminalize providers who deliver abortion services. The Texas law includes exceptions for pregnancies threatening a woman’s life or when there is a risk of “substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”
Still, the Biden administration argued Texas’ law sought to overrule EMTALA, which the Democrat-controlled executive branch has leaned on to preserve abortion access in states where it is restricted.
Texas and its attorney general, Ken Paxton, argued that EMTALA does not specify abortion as an emergency care procedure as interpreted by the administration and that its law was not in conflict.
Paxton’s office had filed the lawsuit in 2022 in response to EMTALA guidance issued by the Department of Health and Human Services. It secured victories from a Texas federal district judge and the 5th Circuit—a frequent stop for conservatives seeking favorable rulings—leading the administration to petition the Supreme Court.
“This is a major victory at SCOTUS that will protect Texas medical providers from being forced to violate State law,” Paxton said in a release celebrating the top court’s decision not to hear the case.
Supreme Court justices did not say why they declined to hear the case, which is standard procedure when denying certiorari.
That choice is both consistent with and a departure from the top court’s ruling on a similar case involving EMTALA and an Idaho abortion law—which was amended to include life-saving exemptions but is less clear on those for a woman’s broader health—back in June.
There, the top court had already granted a temporary stay in Idaho’s favor but in June ruled 6-3 that it had erred in doing so. The ban on emergency abortions was lifted while lower courts return to the issue— a minor victory for the administration that left the broader question of EMTALA and state laws unanswered.
Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority at the time, suggested that the state would be unlikely to succeed in its argument against EMTALA. Conservative justices’ dissent, written by Samuel Alito, painted state law as the likely winner and called the ruling a “baffling” about-face on “the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents.”
The Idaho case is still playing out in lower courts and could potentially return to SCOTUS for consideration.