Supreme Court Prematurely Releases DIG in Moyle

Bloomberg downloaded the file before it was removed.

Bloomberg has a scoop!

The US Supreme Court is poised to allow abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho, according to a copy of the opinion that was briefly posted on the court's website.

The decision would reinstate a lower court order that had ensured hospitals in the state could perform emergency abortions to protect the health of the mother. The briefly posted version indicated the majority will dismiss the case as "improvidently granted."

Bloomberg Law obtained a copy of the opinion that appeared briefly on the court's website as the justices were issuing two other opinions Wednesday morning. The copy of the opinion isn't necessarily the final ruling, given that it hasn't been released.

The Supreme Court's press office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on this inadvertent release.

This morning I was clicking reload as the opinions were coming down, but I missed this. The link must have been there momentarily.

This is a huge error on the Court's part. For all of the post-Dobbs security measures, this was a self-own. They usually hold all of the DIGs for the last day of the term, but this one came prematurely.

The Court's order from January stated:

The stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court. VIDED.

Is a cert denial akin to "sending down" a judgment?

In any event, a DIG here is another victory for the Biden Administration.

Update: Bloomberg has more details:

The Supreme Court's press office said the opinion in the case had not been officially released. "The Court's Publications Unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the Court's website," Patricia McCabe, the court's public information officer. "The Court's opinion in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States will be issued in due course."

The copy indicates the court is voting 6-3 to lift a stay it previously placed on a federal district court order, with conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissenting. The district court order is designed to stay in place while the litigation goes forward.

The high court decision "will prevent Idaho from enforcing its abortion ban when the termination of a pregnancy is needed to prevent serious harms to a woman's health," Justice Elena Kagan said in a concurring opinion.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately to say that she wouldn't have dismissed the case, according to the copy that was briefly online.

"Today's decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay," she wrote. "While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires."

Update: Bloomberg posted a link to the opinion.

It is not formatted as a Supreme Court opinion would be formatted.

The Metadata says the author is "Thomas Houston." There is a notation at the top that says Moyle v. 1.0 5/23/2024 12:00 PM.

Comments

[Joe_dallas]

Virtually no one is opposed to abortion to protect the life of the mother. The catholic church, which is very anti-abortion, even provides that abortion is okay to save the life of the mother.

Pro abortionists want the terms medical emergency or health of the mother to include virtually any risk to the health of the mother to be treated as justifying the abortion.

[Krayt]

Apparently enough support it in Idaho to get it into law. Even if inadvertantly, they are apparently dragging ass to correct the law.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I can think of three deplorable jackasses outside Idaho who seem to believe some avoidable female deaths are a small price to pay for devotion to superstition.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Virtually no one includes at least 4 justices, including the chief, on the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23719027/ok-full-ruling.pdf

[Joe_dallas]

The question is whether it is really to save the life of the mother ie an actual life threatening emergency or just normal risk associated with child bearing - ie risk that has been largely eliminated due to the significant improvements in child bearing health care. Approximately 25-33 per 100k based on 2018-2022 data.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Kane is pretty explicit he thinks there is balancing of interests between the mother and the fetus that the public is supposed to weigh. He clearly thinks there is a side that says the mother doesn’t have a right to life in this scenario (i.e. a duty to die)

[Bob from Ohio]

"clearly "!

[Sarcastr0]

Nicely done.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Read paragraph 5 of his dissent. He thinks there are two sides to the question.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I'm not sure if you're saying that Kane personally believe that, or just that he thinks there are other people out there that believe that. But I don't think there's anything in the opinion to support either position , unless you assume that everyone interprets a constitution to embody their policy preferences.

[LawTalkingGuy]

“Unless you assume that everyone interprets a constitution to embody their policy preferences.”

All legal interpretation is about values. If you have a theory of legal interpretation that mothers have a constitutional right to their own life if the public balances it against the right of an unborn, then I’d say that is driven by your values.

Kane announced a balancing test. He thinks there are two sides of the question. So at the very least he thinks the question exists. He has immense political power and he is using that power to take the side that the state can impose a duty to die on expectant mothers. You can live in a fantasy world where that’s simply a valueless interpretation of text. But everyone else knows that’s bullshit.

[jdgalt1]

Why would SCOTUS not want both DIGs and GVRs to be released quickly, since they are not going to bother writing opinions about those cases?

[Rossami]

My guess is that it keeps the cases in play for whatever horse-trading the Justices do as they finalize cases. It may well be that there are opinions waiting in the wings if there enough votes show up to do something other than DIG or GVR.

In a perfect world, I'd like to believe that every case is considered and decided in isolation. In the real world, that doesn't happen with this or any court.

[Brett Bellmore]

Because they want to be on vacation before the whining starts?

[Bob from Ohio]

Lots of conservative siding with the lefties today. This term really.

Not a good long term sign. Chewing up that Dobbs and Bruen good will.

[LawTalkingGuy]

If you want to turn the positions of: “domestic abusers should keep guns” and “women don’t have a right to life if they’re pregnant” into conservative positions and being against that into “lefty” ones, by all means please do that. In fact tell everyone you know in Ohio that this is the case. Sherrod will appreciate it.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

If you want to forget the word "unconvicted", then the world's your oyster.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Yes. Please go with this.

[Rossami]

Since that was the entire point of the case, yeah, that's what we should be going with. Your strawman arguments are tiresome.

[LawTalkingGuy]

What’s the strawman? The conservative position is that abusers should have guns. People suddenly don’t become domestic abusers just because they aren’t convicted.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"But the thing is, you don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect." /Edwin Meese

[Sarcastr0]

Oh noes the court may lose the goodwill of Bob from Ohio!

Someone should alert the Chief!

[Bob from Ohio]

If I think it others do as well. JB has a "Blue June" post up already.

[Sarcastr0]

Holy crap, you AND Blackman!

Dark times for the Court; how will they claim legitimacy now?

[Noscitur a sociis]

Clearly Chief Justice Roberts must resign.

[Bob from Ohio]

Not til next February!

[David Nieporent]

+10.

[Joe_dallas]

The question is whether it is really to save the life of the mother ie an actual life threatening emergency or just normal risk associated with child bearing - ie risk that has been largely eliminated due to the significant improvements in child bearing health care. Approximately 25-33 per 100k based on 2018-2022 data.

[Sarcastr0]

Ah yes, the 'statistically, exceptions can be ignored' theory of the law.

Good luck with that.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, let's look at this mathematically.

A death rate of 33/100k, over a period of 9 months. Equivalent to 44 over 12 months. That's a death probability of 0.00044, or to put it another way, one death in about 2,300 years worth of pregnancy.

Looking at an actuary table, that's... about the normal risk of death for an 18 year old woman. But I'm going to assume that this 44 is on top of deaths unrelated to pregnancy.

By the time that 18 year old woman is 28, she'll have twice the death probability. so for an 18 year old woman being pregnant is roughly equivalent to being 28, which is not normally thought of as hideously dangerous.

For the 28 year old woman, it's about equivalent to being 34, which, again, is not normally thought of as a frighteningly dangerous.

Or, let's compare pregnancy to other activities people usually voluntarily engage in.

So, about half as dangerous as commercial aviation.

A tenth as dangerous as driving.

A twentieth as dangerous as riding a bike.

Just to put it into perspective. We're not talking about a huge degree of danger, pregnancy is actually remarkably safe compared to other normal every day activities.

[Sarcastr0]

There will always be unlucky people who beat the odds; we don't just judicially write them off as statistically non-entities!

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The more conservatives talk about abortion, the more women -- especially younger, educated, skilled women residing in modern, strong communities -- will despise conservatives and conservatism.

Here's to a long, robust debate!

[Nige]

Wow. Better make it illegal to save the life of the mother, so.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Little baby children die at higher rates from vaccines than that, and they haven't been banned either.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Die, mere mortal bitches, at the altar of the superstition we (and our conservative Republican patrons) worship.

-- Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch

[hobie]

Them preteen hussies can join Matthew Shepard, Freddie Mercury, Ashtray Babbitt and all the other degenerates in hell

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Great news! There is no hell. No more than there is a Delta Tau Chi house, an Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, a Tatooine, or an old women who lived in a shoe and had so many children she didn't know what to do.

Some "nursery rhymes" were demented. A nice part of progress has been ditching that type of old-timey bullshit.

[Purple Martin]

Also no Galt Gulch, though Ayn Rand's Strong Male/Swooning Female romance novels are considered sacred writings to some.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

"pregnant people" - KJB

Xe affirms xe doesn't know what a woman is.

You evil Marxists are so ugh tiresome.

[Sarcastr0]

You want to tell us more about the triply redundant little baby children?

To heck with Russia, you may be a prokaryote asset.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Could you please forward me the State approved list of words and phrases? Please don't report "little baby children" to CISA or the Pentagon. It *isn't* Domestic Terroristic speech. Also, don't report it to HHS, saying "little baby children" isn't a public health disinformation that needs censoring to protect our sacred Democracy.