President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice dropped a lawsuit brought by Joe Biden’s DOJ against the State of Idaho for its ban on abortion except in narrow circumstances. Pro-life advocates were able to celebrate in Idaho – but not in Washington State as the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Seattle-area church must pay for abortions for its employees.
The Supreme Court returned abortion regulation to the states when in 2022 it overturned Roe v. Wade in the Mississippi case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. However, that wasn’t enough for the Biden administration.
Idaho officials praised the Trump DOJ’s action. State Attorney General Raul Labrador said it’s been Idaho’s position from the beginning that there’s been “no conflict” between EMTALA – a Regan-era law requiring hospital emergency rooms to provide care for any pregnant woman who shows up – and the state’s abortion ban.
EMTALA has been at the core of the Biden DOJ’s lawsuit.
“The goal of each [law] is to save lives in every circumstance, both the mother and her unborn child. We are grateful that meddlesome DOJ litigation on this issue will no longer be an obstacle to Idaho enforcing its laws,” Labrador said.
Idaho law allows abortion in cases of rape, incest or when a physician deems it necessary to save the mother’s life.
If common sense prevailed in Idaho, it was missing further west.
Missing – or ignoring – the point
The State of Washington passed a law in 2018 that requires employers to offer insurance benefits that pay for abortion services if the benefits also cover birth services.
Cedar Park Assembly of God in Kirkland, WA, argued that paying for abortion services violated its religious beliefs. But a panel consisting of judges Susan Graber, Lucy Koh and Consuelo Maria Callahan ruled that the church lacked standing and had no right to make such an argument.
Graber was appointed by President Bill Clinton, Koh by Joe Biden and Callahan by George W. Bush.
The judges said that because the church’s employees and family members had not used, planned to use, or even considered using their workplace health benefits for abortion services that the church was unable to prove it had suffered injury.
Three-judge rulings are common at the circuit level. The church can request a hearing before the complete Ninth Circuit, which would involve all 29 judges. That’s the next step Kevin Theriot, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, said on Washington Watch Friday.
He told show host Jody Hice that the judges did some “backbends” and ignored precedent within the Ninth Circuit in reaching their decision. ADF previously represented a California church in a similar case.
“The court not only said that it violated the church's rights, but clearly that they had standing to challenge the law. The Ninth Circuit in this case previously said that this law actually affects the church's rights, which anybody just looking at the law could understand,” Theriot said.
The judges reasoned that church-provided healthcare benefits used for abortion would be no different than a church employee receiving a paycheck then purchasing something that violated the church’s teachings … such as alcohol, for example.
“That’s ridiculous that as the law is actually requiring the church to participate in the process by buying the plan that facilitates their abortion. That would be more like the state requiring the church to give them a bottle of whiskey,” Theriot said.
“Long term, the Supreme Court is going to have to take this up if the Ninth Circuit doesn’t fix it,” he added.
The Biden approach
In suing the State of Idaho, the Biden administration focused on a 1986 law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). Simply put, EMTALA states that if a pregnant woman arrives in labor at an emergency room, she should be provided care regardless of her ability to pay.
“[But] the Biden administration argued that federal law required emergency rooms to provide abortion services … which is insane,” David Closson, director of the Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, told Hice. “Nowhere in the original law was this part of that.”
The move will not immediately change the status quo for emergency abortion access in the state, CNN reported, though the definition of “emergency” could come into play.
St. Luke’s hospital system brought its own lawsuit challenging the law earlier this year. The day before the Trump DOJ dropped its lawsuit, a lower-court judge granted St. Luke’s a temporary restraining order.
But the DOJ’s end of the lawsuit could influence Supreme Court thought on the matter and could encourage other conservative states to expand abortion restrictions, CNN surmised.
“This shows us that the Trump administration very clearly is sending a signal that they're going to respect states' rights when it comes to the life issue,” Closson argued.
Pro-life advocates expressed concern over Republicans’ weakened platform language on abortion at last summer’s party convention. But Trump’s early actions have shown strong support for life.
“They've already taken federal actions, protecting the Hyde Amendment, reinstating the Mexico City policy, reentering the Geneva Consensus Declaration,” Closson noted.
“This is just the latest signal that under the Trump administration, specifically this is the Justice Department, pro-life policies are being honored and pursued. We have much to be thankful for,” he concluded.
