The Catholic Medical Association filed suit in federal court Friday challenging the Biden administration’s use of emergency medicine statutes to circumvent state-level restrictions on abortion.
The case marks the most recent challenge against the Biden administration’s interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, EMTALA, a 1986 law requiring healthcare providers to perform stabilizing medical treatment during emergency circumstances.
Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra issued a memorandum on EMTALA, saying abortion procedures can constitute stabilizing medical care during emergency circumstances. Critics say the policy forces doctors into providing the controversial procedure regardless of whether it violates their religious beliefs.
Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Matt Bowman, representing the group of about 2,500 Catholic physicians and healthcare providers, said his clients, particularly emergency room physicians, “are tasked with preserving life.”
“Elective abortion is not life-saving care — it ends the life of the unborn child—and EMTALA does not grant the government authority to force doctors to perform these dangerous procedures; rather, it requires doctors to treat a pregnant woman and her ‘unborn child,’” said Bowman in a press statement.
The statute does explicitly use the phrase “unborn child” four times, which critics of the Biden administration say reflects that the original intention of the legislation does not include abortion as stabilizing medical treatment.
Friday’s lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, Nashville Division.
ADF is acting as co-counsel in a similar EMTALA-related case regarding the state of Idaho’s Defense of Life Act, which nearly completely prohibits abortion except in narrow, life-threatening circumstances for the mother.
The Supreme Court in June issued a ruling in the Idaho case, Moyle v. United States, allowing physicians to carry out abortions under EMTALA without completely overturning the state’s prohibition on abortion outside of medical emergencies.
The justices, however, did not rule on the merits of the Idaho case, leaving the exact interpretation of EMTALA still up for challenge.
A similar suit to that of the Catholic Medical Association, filed by anti-abortion doctors in Texas, was upheld by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Jan. 2024, in which the appeals court ruled that the Biden administration could not use EMTALA to compel physicians to perform abortions against their conscience.
That case was also litigated by Bowman and Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy group.
In October, the Supreme Court declined to hear the Biden administration’s challenge to the Texas case.
Bowman said in Friday’s press statement that each of the nearly half of U.S. states that have placed gestational age limits on abortion “allow doctors to do whatever is necessary to preserve the life of a mother.”
“Doctors — especially in emergency rooms — are tasked with preserving life,” said Bowman. “Federal bureaucrats have no business compelling doctors or hospitals to end unborn lives, especially when the law they are citing grants them no such authority.”
With President-elect Donald Trump being sworn into office on Jan. 20, it is unclear how the change-over in administrations could affect the outcome of the new EMTALA case.
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Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would have the power to issue his own memorandum on EMTALA, possibly changing the trajectory of how the statute is enforced.
Kennedy, a Catholic and a lawyer, may also have sympathy for the religious liberty argument.