The Department of Justice has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Biden administration against the state of Idaho over its total abortion ban, paving the way for the ban to go back into effect, according to court records.
However, in a separate case, the St. John’s Hospital System in Idaho was able to obtain a preliminary injunction blocking the ban from going into effect, court documents show.
The federal case — filed under the previous administration but now being dropped by the Trump administration — claimed the Idaho abortion ban violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, a federal law that requires all hospitals that receive Medicare funding to provide “stabilizing care” to all patients whose health is in danger, according to the law.
President Donald Trump leaves after addressing a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on Mar. 4, 2025 in Washington.
Win McNamee/via Reuters
Idaho’s total abortion ban went into effect in August 2022, prohibiting nearly all abortions with exceptions for reported cases of rape or incest or when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”
The Biden administration sued Idaho over the ban arguing that EMTALA preempts the state abortion ban and requires emergency room physicians to provide abortions not just if needed to save the life of the mother but also to prevent serious health consequences.
The highly publicized case reached the U.S. Supreme Court last year. The court dismissed the case and sent it back to a lower court. That decision allowed emergency abortions to resume in Idaho.
Trump appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending federal protections for abortion rights and laying the pathway for states to prohibit abortion care. He has said he supports exceptions for abortions in cases of rape and incest, but said it should be left up to the states to decide how to regulate the procedure.
Abortion activists rally for “reproductive rights and emergency abortion care” outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on April 24, 2024.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Pro-abortion rights groups criticized the decision to dismiss the case, saying it puts the lives of pregnant women in danger.
“President Trump talks about ‘protecting women’ in sports and in locker rooms, meanwhile he’d let them go septic in the ER. Dismissing this case is indefensible — a case meant to protect women’s lives in a state with one of the strictest abortion bans in the U.S. Without the rulings in this case, hospitals were airlifting women out of Idaho while they were hemorrhaging so they could get life-saving abortions,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.
Planned Parenthood also criticized the move.
“We know what happens when a state prevents people from getting emergency care: pregnant people suffer potentially deadly consequences. Idahoans have already gone through enough trauma, including women being airlifted out of state to get care that should be available in any emergency room. The Trump administration is willing to practically guarantee that more families will suffer at the hands of the state,” Alexis McGill Johnson, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.