A Hawaiian judge had issued a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of the new law while courts considered its constitutionality. (Spoiler: it's constitutional, unless the courts believe that any law restricting a dangerous, experimental medical procedure is unconstitutional. There is no "But This Is About Teh Gheys!" clause in the Constitution.)
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed Idaho to begin broadly enforcing a new state law barring many forms of gender-affirming care for minors, at least for now.
The high court, which sharply reined in a lower court decision that had blocked Idaho from enforcing the law, left in place protections for such treatments for two anonymous teenagers whose families filed suit to block it.
The impact of the ruling for other transgender minors seeking treatment but aren't plaintiffs in the challenge is murky, because they could potentially try to join the pending lawsuit or file suits of their own.
The court's three liberal justices dissented from the high court's ruling, while all the court's conservatives except Chief Justice John Roberts wrote or joined opinions explaining their views.
The law, which Republican Gov. Brad Little signed in April 2023, sought to ban medical professionals from providing gender affirming care, including transition surgeries, puberty blockers or hormone therapy for those under 18. Doctors could face up to 10 years in prison for providing such services under the law. The high court's ruling, while not a final one on the legality of bans on gender-affirming treatment, could reverberate among the legal challenges in other states that have passed similar bans.
The Gaslight Media is pushing the dissent of the incompetent Didn't Earn It hire Ketanji Brown-Jackson.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has warned that her conservative colleagues failed to show "reason and restraint" by allowing Idaho's transgender youth health care ban to be enforced during an appeal.
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The decision does not apply to the two teenage transgender girls whose families filed a lawsuit over the ban. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch noted in his concurring opinion that "the plaintiffs face no harm from the partial stay," while arguing that blocking the ban could prevent "Idaho from executing any aspect of its law for years."
Jackson and fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan objected to the decision. In her dissenting opinion, Jackson argued that the court had failed to show "respect for lower court judges" and that Idaho had not shown that blocking the ban during the appeal would cause the state "irreversible injury."
Biden and the Democrats have meanwhile launched lawsuits at states which outlaw abortion, attempting to impose a new Roe v. Wade guarantee to abortion, but this time imposed by the president and his executive bureaucrats rather than the courts.
The case is going to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is set to consider a second abortion case this term, this time dealing with claims by a Republican-led state that the Biden administration is attempting to wield a 40-year-old federal law as an "abortion mandate."
On the heels of a debate over the Federal Food and Drug Administration's regulation of an abortion pill, the high court will consider later this month whether the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) pre-empts the state of Idaho's newly enacted Defense of Life Act -- which makes it a crime for any medical provider to perform an abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.
The Justice Department argued that the state's law does not go far enough to allow abortions in more medical emergency circumstances.
However, proponents of the state law say that the administration's lawsuit against Idaho is attempting to use a federal statute as an "abortion mandate" to benefit the president ahead of the 2024 elections.
"Construing EMTALA as a federal abortion mandate raises grave questions under the major questions doctrine that affect both Congress and this Court," Idaho argued in legal filings.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said, "The Supreme Court made it clear that it's up to the states to decide what our laws should be and that it's not for the federal government."
"But Joe Biden and his administration decided to come straight and sue us in federal courts. We are excited to go before the Supreme Court to show that the state should be deciding these issues and not the federal government," he said.
The DOJ said in its response to the high court that while Idaho's law makes it a felony for a doctor to terminate a pregnancy unless doing so is "necessary" to prevent the patient's "death," that exception is "narrower" than EMTALA, which by its terms "protects patients not only from imminent death but also from emergencies that seriously threaten their health."
However, Idaho accused the administration of "construing the spare phrase" in the federal law "as a blank slate to be filled with the Executive Branch's preferred abortion policy collides with multiple statutory provisions guaranteeing emergency medical care for a pregnant woman and her unborn child."