STORY: It may be the highest court in the land but it's not above pressing "send" by accident.
Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the U.S. Supreme Court briefly posted to its website a ruling that would allow abortions to be performed in Idaho in cases of medical emergencies.
The post was then quickly removed.
A court spokesperson said in a statement that a document was (quote) "inadvertently and briefly uploaded" to the court's website, and that the opinion in the case "will be issued in due course."
According to the Bloomberg report, the decision would effectively reinstate a lower court's ruling that Idaho's near-total abortion ban must yield to a 1986 U.S. law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) when the two statutes conflict.
EMTALA ensures that patients can receive emergency care at hospitals that receive funding under the federal Medicare program.
And the U.S. Justice Department turned to EMTALA to protect abortion access after the Supreme Court overturned the right to terminate a pregnancy nationwide in 2022. Here's Attorney General Merrick Garland:
"It does not matter what state a hospital subject to EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act) operates in, if a patient comes into the emergency room with a medical emergency jeopardizing the patient's life or health, the hospital must provide the treatment necessary to stabilize that patient."
According to Bloomberg, the court's vote on the Idaho case was 6-3, with conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch in dissent.
The development on Wednesday marked the second time in two years that a major Supreme Court ruling on abortion has been disclosed before being formally issued by the justices.
In May 2022, Politico obtained a leaked draft of a ruling penned by Justice Samuel Alito that overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade precedent.
The culprit behind that leak has never been identified.
