The court clawed back the ruling, which it says it will formally make public at a later time.
The Supreme Court released an opinion in an abortion case on June 26 but quickly unpublished the ruling, in what a spokesperson described as a mistake.
The opinion involves a case against an Idaho law that bans most abortions.
“[The opinion] has not been released,” Patricia McCabe, a spokesperson for the Supreme Court, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
“The court’s publications unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the court’s website.”
She noted that the opinion will be published “in due course.”
The nation’s top court had an opinion release day on June 26 and is scheduled to publish additional opinions on June 27 and June 28.
A draft opinion in a separate case that challenged the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade was leaked in 2022, setting off protests against justices believed to be backing the opinion. The final ruling, when issued, struck down Roe v. Wade.
The Idaho case deals with a law that prohibits doctors from performing abortions, with exceptions in any trimester if a doctor believes an abortion is necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman. The law also contains exceptions during the first trimester for women who were the victims of rape or incest.
The law enables felony charges to be brought against doctors who violate the statute.
Before the Idaho law took effect in August 2022, however, it was blocked by a federal judge. Judge Lynn Winmill said the state law clashed with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal law that requires emergency room doctors at hospitals that receive Medicare funds to offer treatments to stabilize patients who arrive with emergency conditions.
Judge Winmill pointed to the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause.
“At its core, the Supremacy Clause says state law must yield to federal law when it’s impossible to comply with both,” he wrote as he entered a preliminary injunction.
