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Page Number: 11

4 

MOYLE v. UNITED STATES 

BARRETT, J., concurring 

have  “shed  more  light  on  this  case  than  in  the  nature  of 
things was afforded at the time” the Court considered peti-
tioners’  emergency  applications.  Belcher  v.  Stengel,  429 
U. S.  118,  119  (1976)  (per curiam)  (dismissed  as  improvi-
dently granted).  I am now convinced that these cases are 
no longer appropriate for early resolution. 

The parties dispute whether EMTALA requires hospitals 
to provide abortions—or any other treatment forbidden by 
state  law—as  necessary  stabilizing  care.  They  also  disa-
gree about whether EMTALA, as a statute enacted under 
Congress’s  spending  power  and  that  operates  on  private
parties, can preempt state law (an issue aired for the first
time in this Court).  In my judgment, it would be imprudent 
to answer these important questions now.  Since this suit 
began  in  the  District  Court,  Idaho  law  has  significantly 
changed—twice.  And since we granted certiorari, the par-
ties’ litigating positions have rendered the scope of the dis-
pute unclear, at best.

In  its  stay  application,  Idaho  argued  that  the  Govern-
ment’s interpretation of EMTALA would render Idaho’s Act
virtually unenforceable.  As Idaho understood it, the Gov-
ernment’s theory would allow physicians to perform abor-
tions  whenever  necessary  to  avoid  “ ‘serious  jeopardy’ ”  to
the  mother’s  mental  health.  Stay  Reply  Brief  in  No. 
23A470, p. 6.  On that broad reading, Idaho projected that
emergency  rooms  would  function  as  “federal  abortion  en-
claves  governed  not  by  state  law,  but  by  physician  judg-
ment,  as  enforced  by  the  United  States’s  mandate  to  per-
form abortions on demand.”  Ibid. (citation omitted).  Idaho 
also  warned  that  the  Government’s  interpretation  would
“threate[n]  religious  healthcare  providers”  by  forcing  doc-
tors  and  hospitals  to  perform  abortions  regardless  of  con-
science objections.  Id., at 15.  Both of these points were rel-
evant  to  the  Court’s  assessment  of  the  irreparable  harm
that  Idaho  would  suffer  from  the  preliminary  injunction, 
Nken  v.  Holder,  556  U. S.  418,  434  (2009),  as  well  as  the