(Bloomberg) -- The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Idaho over the state’s law banning abortion after six weeks, saying that federal law requires doctors and hospitals to perform medically required abortions to preserve the pregnant person’s health.
The suit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Idaho, is the first legal action the Biden administration has taken against states that have restricted access to abortion in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling striking down the constitutional right to the procedure. The filing, first obtained by Bloomberg, argues that the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act -- which requires that doctors must perform medically stabilizing abortions in an emergency -- preempts the state law.
“The suit seeks to hold invalid the state’s criminal prohibition of providing abortions to women who are suffering emergencies,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference Tuesday. “Idaho’s law would make it a criminal offense for doctors to provide the emergency medical treatment that federal law requires.”
The Idaho law is scheduled to take effect Aug. 25. The state has already been sued over the law by regional Planned Parenthood at least three times.
The state law was triggered after the US Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion in June by overturning Roe v. Wade, a historic ruling that is likely to render the procedure largely illegal in half the country as a result of pre-existing laws or new legislation passed by states.
“This is not in any way going around the Supreme Court,” Garland said in response to a reporter’s question. “Federal law invalidates state laws that are in contradiction.”
The Justice Department alleged in the suit that Idaho has “passed a near-absolute ban on abortions” that will “make it a criminal offense for doctors to comply with EMTALA’s requirement to provide stabilizing treatment, even where a doctor determines that abortion is the medical treatment necessary to prevent a patient from suffering severe health risks or even death.”
The Idaho attorney general’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The Health and Human Services Department, which regulates EMTALA, clarified that emergency doctors need to stabilize or treat pregnant patients who experience a miscarriage or other medical emergency in July 11 guidance. Texas has since sued to block that HHS guidance.
EMTALA is based on “an iron clad legal principle,” that when there’s a conflict between federal and state law, federal law prevails, said Lawrence Gostin, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. This principal comes from the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution.
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Author: Shira Stein and Chris Strohm