The Supreme Court on Thursday handed a temporary victory to the Biden administration in its second abortion battle of the current term, putting parts of Idaho’s abortion law back on hold.

The justices decided that two cases dealing with the relationship between Idaho’s abortion ban and a federal law regarding emergency medical treatment for pregnant women were “improvidently granted” and said that a lower court’s stay on parts of the state law should be in place as the cases continue to work their way through the legal system.

In the short term, pregnant women in the state will have access to emergency abortions in hospitals, but abortion will be illegal under nearly all other circumstances.

Idaho’s law criminalizes performing the procedure except in cases of extreme threats to a pregnant woman’s life or cases involving rape or incest. The court order slightly broadens that first exception, making it clear that doctors will not be punished for performing emergency abortions in hospital emergency rooms.

Thursday’s ruling brings the pair of Idaho cases to the same conclusion spelled out in a document mistakenly uploaded to the Supreme Court’s website on Wednesday, which was obtained by Bloomberg News.

The document showed that the justices had decided the Idaho cases were “improvidently granted” and restored a lower court order protecting access to abortion in Idaho emergency rooms, as the Deseret News previously reported.

Idaho abortion cases

The battle over abortion access in Idaho originated soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, returning control over abortion policy to state lawmakers.

Idaho planned to enforce a near-total ban on abortion, but its new law was put on hold by a lawsuit from the Biden administration, which argued that the policy conflicted with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.

Federal officials argued that when federal law comes into conflict with state-level restrictions on abortion, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act should win out.

In other words, they said that hospitals should be required to provide emergency abortions, even under circumstances in which state law would typically prevent the procedure.

Idaho leaders, on the other hand, argued that the Biden administration was unlawfully interfering with the work of state lawmakers.

Federal officials succeeded in getting a district court to grant a stay, which put parts of Idaho’s abortion law on hold. After a panel of judges initially ruled for the state, the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s decision, leaving the stay in place as judges continued to weigh the overall question of what should win out when state-level abortion bans conflict with federal health care policy.

In January, the Supreme Court agreed to weigh in on the lower court order and also said that Idaho’s abortion law could fully take effect while the justices considered the debate, as the Deseret News previously reported.

This story will be updated.