Thanks to Donald Trump, the Supreme Court is more conservative than ever before. Now they’re prepared to hand Biden a massive loss.
And this Supreme Court curveball sent the White House into a total meltdown.
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent the Biden administration from using a 1986 federal statute to overturn his state’s pro-life laws.
“The whole point of Dobbs was to restore to the states their authority to regulate abortion. Yet the administration seeks to thwart Idaho’s exercise of self-government on this important topic,” the brief stated. It called the Biden administration’s “claimed abortion mandate” under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) “imaginary.”
“The Medicare Act generally — and EMTALA specifically — preserve the right of states to regulate the practice of medicine, including on the issue of abortion,” the brief went on to say.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) reported that the Biden administration filed a lawsuit against Idaho in 2022, claiming that it might utilize EMTALA to force doctors to conduct illegal abortions.
Contrary to the administration’s assertion, “there is no conflict between EMTALA and Idaho’s law as both seek to save lives and neither requires abortions to be performed.”
“After a lower court upheld the Biden administration’s attempt to rewrite EMTALA and prevented Idaho from enforcing its law,” the legal group explained, “the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and issued a stay allowing Idaho to continue to protect the lives of women and their unborn children as the litigation continues.”
ADF lawyers are representing Labrador’s office in the ongoing case.
In a letter to ADF, Labrador said: “Despite the portrayal by the media and the Biden administration, both Idaho law and EMTALA share a consistent goal: to protect everyone’s life, including unborn children.”
“Idaho’s law is perfectly consistent with EMTALA, which provides explicit protections for ‘unborn children’ in four separate places,” he went on to say.
“The notion that EMTALA requires doctors to perform abortions is absurd,” stressed the attorney general.
“We are asking the Supreme Court to end the administration’s unlawful overreach and to respect the people of Idaho’s decision to protect life.”
President Ronald Reagan signed EMTALA into law in 1986 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA).
According to the federal government’s Medicare website, the legislation’s objective was to “ensure public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay.”
Reagan was well-known throughout his presidency for being a passionate opponent of legal abortion.
Two years after signing EMTALA, he asked Congress to introduce a pro-life bill, claiming that no one is “more powerless than the unborn.”
Last month, Labrador stated that he was “pleased and encouraged by the Supreme Court’s decision” to hear his appeal and stay the lower court order.
“The federal government has been wrong from day one,” he said at the time. “Federal law does not preempt Idaho’s Defense of Life Act.”
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
