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A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked part of Idaho’s strict abortion law that's scheduled to take effect Thursday, handing the Biden administration a narrow courtroom win in its first lawsuit to protect reproductive rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. (Richards, 8/25)

Judge B. Lynn Winmill, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1995, said some of the Idaho law’s provisions required medical personnel to do “the opposite” of what their training dictates: “to effectively identify problems and treat them promptly so patients are stabilized before they develop a life-threatening emergency.” The pause on enforcement will continue until a lawsuit challenging the ban is resolved, the judge said.(Thrush, 8/24)

This particular case — one of many playing out across the country — concerns whether states enacting near-total abortion bans are preempting the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known as EMTALA. That decades-old federal law requires health care workers provide treatment that stabilizes a patient experiencing a medical emergency, and the Biden administration released guidance in July warning doctors and hospitals that EMTALA applies even if the required treatment is an abortion — no matter what state law dictates. (Ollstein, 8/24)

The conflicting rulings came in two of the first lawsuits over Biden's attempts to keep abortion legal after the conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the procedure nationwide. Legal experts said the dueling rulings in Idaho and Texas could, if upheld on appeal, force the Supreme Court to wade back into the debate. (Raymond, 8/24)