This post was updated June 30 at 8:05 p.m.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 opinion Thursday morning to temporarily allow healthcare providers to perform emergency abortions needed to stabilize pregnant patients in Idaho.

In the decision, the Supreme Court dismissed two emergency abortion cases – Idaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States – from its docket on the grounds of them being “improvidently granted,” returning litigation power to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. However, the high court also temporarily reinstated a lower court’s injunction of Idaho’s near-total abortion ban while Ninth Circuit litigates, allowing healthcare workers to provide abortions when the patient’s health is endangered for the time being.

The liberal bloc of the court issued a concurring opinion authored by Justice Elena Kagan to dismiss the cases, which Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined in full and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined in part. However, the conservative bloc was divided in opinion: Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts concurred in a second written opinion, while Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.

Bloomberg News prematurely acquired a draft of the opinion Wednesday after it was “inadvertently and briefly” uploaded to the Supreme Court’s website, according to court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe. However, the court did not officially release the decision until Thursday morning.

The cases will decide the legality of Idaho’s Defense for Life Act – a “trigger” law that went into effect after the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. The law bans abortion in all cases, including when the woman’s health is endangered, with exceptions for incest, rape or if the abortion is “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”

The Biden Administration sued Idaho to challenge the law in 2022, claiming that it blocked healthcare professionals from following the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, a federal statute that requires hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment to patients.

“EMTALA’s definition of an emergency medical condition—for which the hospital would be required to facilitate stabilizing treatment—is broader than just those circumstances where treatment is ‘necessary to prevent . . . death’ under Idaho law,” the lawsuit said. “The Idaho law therefore conflicts with federal law.”

A federal trial court in Idaho sided with the Justice Department in August 2022. In the ruling, Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction against the law, allowing Idaho healthcare providers to perform abortions if the pregnant woman needed one to avoid “serious impairment” or if her health was in “serious jeopardy.”

In September 2022, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily overturned Winmill’s decision, granting an appeal by Idaho to keep the near-total ban in place. However, the full Ninth Circuit court quickly reversed the decision in early October, ruling that it would reconsider the law with the entire court present and, in the meantime, would uphold Winmill’s injunction.

The Supreme Court announced Jan. 5 that it would hear an appeal to the case but that Idaho’s Defense for Life Act would remain law in the interim. From then, the Idaho law stayed in place with regards to emergency abortions until the Court dismissed the cases Thursday.

In her opinion, Kagan emphasized that the Idaho Defense for Life Act prevents the full execution of EMTALA’s guidelines. By requiring healthcare workers to treat conditions that seriously threaten patients’ health, EMTALA obliges Medicare-funded hospitals in Idaho to provide abortions when a pregnant patient’s health is in danger, the opinion said.

“What falls in the gap between them are cases in which continuing a pregnancy does not put a woman’s life in danger, but still places her at risk of grave health consequences,” Justice Kagan wrote in her concurring opinion. “In that situation, federal law requires a hospital to offer an abortion.”

While Jackson concurred with Part II of Kagan’s opinion, she split with her fellow liberal justices by dissenting with Part I. In her dissenting opinion, Jackson – President Joe Biden’s sole appointment to the court – condemned the Court’s preliminary decision to uphold the Idaho emergency abortion ban in the five months between agreeing to hear and deciding upon the case.

Furthermore, Jackson said in her dissenting opinion that pregnant patients across the country were “paying the price” for the court’s failure to issue a decision on the case. The lack of legal resolution around emergency abortions created confusion for doctors and pregnant patients in emergency medical conditions, she added.

“It is too little, too late,” Jackson said in her dissent. “While this Court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.”

Alito’s dissent – joined by Gorsuch and Thomas – called the decision “baffling” and said the Idaho law contributes to upholding EMTALA by protecting the life of the pregnant patient’s fetus.

“The Government’s preemption theory is plainly unsound,” Justice Alito wrote in his dissenting opinion. “Far from requiring hospitals to perform abortions, EMTALA’s text unambiguously demands that Medicare-funded hospitals protect the health of both a pregnant woman and her ‘unborn child.’”

This is the Court’s second ruling related to abortion since its landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022, which overturned the court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and revoked the constitutional right to an abortion in the United States. On June 13, the Court upheld access to mifepristone, a pill used to induce abortions, after an anti-abortion group sued the FDA for expanding access to the drug.