still sounds like they don't want anything to do with federal preemption....won't it be seen that way by the general public ?
Media is framing this as a win for Biden since abortions are once again allowed at the Idaho hospital, but I see it as a question being settled closer to home.
the makeup of the 9th "Circus' Court of Appeals moved right during Trump's years to now include some common sense judges, though I doubt it's a "conservative" court. The court should let Idaho residents decide, imho.
Well, the problem to start with is that the Supreme Court took up the case, on the basis of an emergency application filed by the State of Idaho, at the beginning of the year, while granting a stay of the U.S. District Court's original injunction against enforcement of the Idaho law. While granting the petition for certiorari before judgment may have only taken four Justices, I'm thinking that issuing the stay would have at least required five (although I'm not positive about that aspect of the situation).
In any event, if those Justices hadn't wanted to engage the federal preemption issue until the Ninth Circuit had had a chance to rule on the matter, the Court could have simply denied the emergency application to start with. But they didn't, and so here we are.
Where I think things eventually landed is, there are now basically three tranches of Justices. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch wanted to decide the case and were prepared to say that EMTLA didn't preempt the Idaho law. Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson were prepared to say that EMTLA did preempt the Idaho law, but they weren't positive they could get two more votes to achieve that result. So Kagan was happy to go along with DIGging the petition, while Jackson, while going along with that, wrote separately to say that, "hey, if it had been up to me, we'd have heard this case now, and I'd have found that EMTLA clearly preempts the Idaho law." She could afford to talk tough, because she knew that the Court was going to be punting the case.
As for Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, at least two of the three presumably had voted in favor of the stay (and in taking up the case) back at the beginning of the year. But now, none of them is too happy about having to pass judgment on the preemption issue. If I had to guess, both Barrett and Kavanaugh are inclined to say that EMTLA doesn't preempt, but they're probably not inclined to associate themselves with the Idaho statute, which they may feel goes just a bit too far in the "pro-life" direction.
And so, with there not being at least two more votes to join Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, the Chief, Barrett, and Kavanaugh exercise the greater part of valor and punt the entire thing back to the Ninth Circuit to decide. And, again, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson certainly won't throw in with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch to go forward now, because they don't have five notes to find preemption under EMTLA and to strike down the Idaho law.
The Court's increasing use of its so-called "shadow docket" has begun to cause nothing but trouble for it. Or, at least, more trouble than the Court is beginning perhaps to think it is worth. As it is, the Moyle case ended up being a complete fiasco, a further indication perhaps that Roberts has lost control of the Court (and, perhaps, the respect of most of his colleague). This was very badly handled from the outset.