The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday “inadvertently and briefly” uploaded what it said was a “document’ about a ruling in a yet-to-be-released, high-profile case over Idaho’s ban on abortions that appeared to indicate the state would be required to allow emergency access for now.
“The Court’s Publications Unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the Court’s website,” Supreme Court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said in a statement.
McCabe said the opinion “has not been released” but would be issued “in due course.”
Bloomberg News was first to report the errant posting and said the document appeared to indicate that the justices had voted to dismiss the Idaho case as “improvidently granted.”
Such an outcome would mean a lower court order requiring access to abortion in emergency situations in Idaho would be reinstated.
Idaho’s Defense of Life Act prohibits nearly all abortions except in reported cases of rape, incest or to prevent the death of the mother. It does not allow an exception when the health of a pregnant woman is at risk.
The Biden administration argued the law is conflict with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, which requires hospitals receiving Medicare funds to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment.”
ABC News did not independently view or obtain the document and it is not clear that what was posted is, in fact, the final ruling. By tradition and under the Court’s rules, the justices can change opinions up to the moment of public release.
The premature posting is an embarrassing misstep for the nation’s hight court, which has sought to tighten security measures around the drafting and release of opinions after a 2022 leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s landmark ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health overturning Roe v. Wade.
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