Foley Hoag LLP again filed two amicus briefs in a case brought by the United States to block Idaho’s anti-abortion law, in an ongoing effort to protect human rights and public health in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In the consolidated cases against the state of Idaho and its legislature now pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Foley Hoag filed one brief on behalf of the Global Justice Center, Amnesty International, and the IPAS Impact Network (“International Human Rights Amici”), and another on behalf of the American Public Health Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the American Medical Women’s Association, the Network for Public Health Law, and 134 deans and scholars in public health, health professions, and health law and policy (“Public Health Amici”). Attorneys from the firm's International Litigation & Arbitration and Healthcare departments were involved with the filings.
The Ninth Circuit will hear oral arguments in the consolidated cases, United States v. State of Idaho and United States v. Moyle, in December, after the Supreme Court earlier this year dismissed its initial grant of certiorari to review the case. The United States first brought this suit in August 2022 to assert the supremacy of the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (“EMTALA”), and to prevent a contrary Idaho law, known as the “Defense of Life Act,” from taking effect.
As explained in the briefs, the Idaho law is a ban on nearly all abortion care necessary to prevent grave harm to pregnant women suffering medical emergencies. It criminalizes nearly all abortion care in Idaho, except for certain specified procedures and so-called life-saving measures when the pregnant woman’s death is near certain. Medical providers are forced to assert, as an affirmative defense to felony prosecution, that abortion care is necessary to prevent the pregnant woman’s death. In other words, the Amici collectively argue, providers are forced to make impossible choices between honoring their Hippocratic oath to provide medical care and facing prison.
The Public Health Amici argue that the text and history of EMTALA establish clear nationwide obligations to provide stabilizing emergency care to all patients, including pregnant women. The law emphasizes emergency-care protections at the labor and delivery phase, and it expands those protections when labor and delivery present risks for the pregnant woman and their unborn child. The Public Health Amici argue that EMTALA preempts state laws that conflict with the emergency-care obligations required of nearly 6,000 U.S. hospitals participating in Medicare. Idaho’s state law is directly at odds with EMTALA’s universal protections. The Public Health Amici also highlight the consequences of Idaho’s law, which directly prohibits and chills the provision of necessary care through the threat of criminal sanctions, thus denying pregnant women a wide range of stabilizing care for even non-obstetric emergency conditions that nonetheless threaten fetal health.
The Public Health Amici are represented by attorneys Thomas Barker, Andrew London, Jack C. Smith, and Kian Azimpoor, with assistance from paralegal Annmarie Silvasy.
The International Human Rights Amici also explain the consequences of the Idaho law and highlight how that law violates international human rights treaties including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against Torture, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Pursuant to its treaty obligations, the U.S. must protect pregnant women’s right to life; right to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; right to be free from discrimination; right to privacy; and right to health. All of those rights are decimated by Idaho’s law.
International Human Rights Amici are represented by attorneys Christina Hioureas, Nick Renzler, and Monica Frascona, with assistance from legal assistant Katie Weiner
