Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-726_6jgm.pdf
Page Number: 18

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

3 

Opinion of JACKSON, J. 

EMTALA  remains  as  imperative  as  ever.  The  United 
States is still hamstrung in its ability to enforce federal law 
while  States  pass  laws  that  effectively  nullify  EMTALA’s
requirements.  And,  on  the  ground,  healthcare  providers
“have been all but paralyzed by legal uncertainties,” placing
pregnant patients at risk while they are waiting to be trans-
ferred out of State to receive the care they need.  Brief for 
St. Luke’s Health System as Amicus Curiae 14–15. 

If anything, the need for a clear answer to the Supremacy
Clause  question  has  only  increased  in  the  intervening
months.  Other States across the country have enacted leg-
islation that gives rise to the same sort of legal conflict that
Idaho  has  created.  This  pre-emption  issue  is  not  going 
away  anytime  soon  and  will  most  certainly  return  to  this
Court.  Indeed, it already has.  Just three days before we 
granted  this  petition,  the  Fifth  Circuit  decided  a  similar 
case,  affirming  a  permanent  injunction  that  prevents  the 
United  States  from  enforcing  EMTALA’s  requirements 
with respect to stabilizing emergency abortions prohibited 
by  Texas  law.    See  Texas  v.  Becerra,  89  F. 4th  529,  533 
(2024).  The United States has already petitioned for certi-
orari  in  that  case.  See  Pet.  for  Cert.  in  Becerra  v.  Texas, 
O. T. 2023, No. 23–1076. 

Nor  has  there  been  any  change  in  today’s  cases  that 
might eliminate or undermine the need for this Court’s re-
view.  The Government continues to maintain (correctly, in
my  view)  that  EMTALA’s  plain  text  requires  hospitals  to 
provide certain emergency abortions when doing so is the
only  way  to  stabilize  an  emergency  condition.    Brief  for 
United  States  12–20.    Idaho  continues  to  criminalize  the 
provision of such abortions unless doing so is necessary to 
prevent  the  patient’s  death.    Idaho  Code  Ann.  §18–
622(2)(a)(i).  And  both  Idaho  and  the  United  States  still 
agree that Idaho law directly criminalizes emergency care 
that  the  Federal  Government  reads  EMTALA  to  require.
See  Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  16–17,  65–66.    Idaho’s  lawyers  may