Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Idaho’s Strict Abortion Ban

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a challenge to Idaho’s near-total ban on abortions, which the Biden administration said conflicted with a federal statute that allowed for some exceptions.

In scheduling arguments for April, the court also temporarily revived the law, which had been partly blocked by a federal trial judge.

The court’s brief order gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications.

The law, enacted in 2020, contained a trigger provision that kicked in 30 days after any U.S. Supreme Court decision “that restores to the states their authority to prohibit abortion.” The decision in the Dobbs case did that, and the law was set to take effect in August 2022.

The law made an exception for abortions “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman” but not to address threats to a woman’s health.

The Justice Department challenged the law under a federal statute, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires hospitals that receive Medicare funding and have emergency rooms to provide treatment necessary to stabilize patients.

That federal law conflicted with and displaced Idaho’s abortion ban, the lawsuit said, because the state ban prohibited doctors from performing abortions when needed to stabilize patients.

“Even in dire situations that might qualify for the Idaho law’s limited ‘necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman’ affirmative defense,” the lawsuit said, “some providers could withhold care based on a well-founded fear of criminal prosecution.”

Under the state law, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices, “an emergency-room physician who concludes that a pregnant woman needs an abortion to stabilize a condition that would