Tag: federal court
Federal Appeals Court Rules Emergency Rooms Need Not Perform Lifesaving Abortions

Federal Appeals Court Rules Emergency Rooms Need Not Perform Lifesaving Abortions

By Eleanor Klibanoff

Federal regulations do not require emergency rooms to perform life-saving abortions if it would run afoul of state law, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

After the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent hospitals guidance, reminding them of their obligation to offer stabilizing care, including medically necessary abortions, under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).

“When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life of the pregnant person — or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition — that state law is preempted,” the guidance said.

Texas sued, saying this was tantamount to a “nationwide mandate that every hospital and emergency-room physician perform abortions.” Several anti-abortion medical associations joined the lawsuit as well.

Since summer 2022, all abortions have been banned in Texas, except to save the life of the pregnant patient. But doctors, and their patients with medically complex pregnancies, have struggled with implementing the medical exception, reportedly delaying or denying abortion care rather than risk up to life in prison and the loss of their license.

At a hearing in November, a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice said that while Texas law might not prohibit medically necessary abortions, the guidance was intended “to ensure that the care is offered when it is required under the statute.”

“Individuals [are] presenting to emergency rooms, suffering from these emergency medical conditions,” McKaye Neumeister said. “Right now, HHS can’t ensure that the hospitals are following their obligations in offering the care that’s required.”

In August 2022, a federal district judge in Lubbock agreed with Texas, saying this guidance amounted to a new interpretation of EMTALA and granting a temporary injunction that was later extended. The Fifth Circuit heard arguments in November, and the judges seemed prepared to uphold the injunction.

Judge Leslie Southwick said there were several “extraordinary things, it seems to me, about this guidance,” and said it seemed HHS was trying to use EMTALA to expand abortion access in Texas to include “broader categories of things, mental health or whatever else HHS would say an abortion is required for.”

Tuesday’s ruling, authored by Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt, said the court “decline[d] to expand the scope of EMTALA.”

“We agree with the district court that EMTALA does not provide an unqualified right for the pregnant mother to abort her child,” Englehardt wrote. “EMTALA does not mandate medical treatments, let alone abortion care, nor does it preempt Texas law.”

This article originally appeared inThe Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.


Federal Court Strikes Down Alex Jones’ Bankruptcy Petition

Federal Court Strikes Down Alex Jones’ Bankruptcy Petition

Far-right conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones has tried to paint himself as a martyr for both the First Amendment and the Seconnd Amendment, but the courts haven’t agreed — finding that he crossed a line by bullying families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims and claiming that they were part of a “false flag” operation. Now Jones has suffered another legal defeat, this time involving his bankruptcy claims.

On Friday, June 10 in Texas, according to the Associated Press, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez dismissed a bankruptcy protection case involving three companies that Jones controls: InfoW LLC, Prison Planet TV and IW Health.

“The judge's action allows the parents' defamation lawsuits against Jones to continue in Texas and Connecticut, where trials are pending on how much he should pay families after judges in both states found Jones and his companies liable for damages,” AP reports. “The families' lawsuits say they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones' followers because of the hoax conspiracy. Jones, based in Austin, Texas, has since said he believes the shooting did occur.”

The Sandy Hook tragedy occurred in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012, when gunman Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people — 20 of them children — before killing himself. Jones, on his show, pushed the nonsense conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook massacre was a false flag operation designed to attack the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. And the families of the victims suffered a great deal of abuse, according to the defamation lawsuits against Jones, when his followers took his baseless claims seriously.

Earlier this year, Jones agreed to a settlement in the lawsuit from relatives of children who were killed in the Sandy Hook massacre, saying he would pay $120,000 per plaintiff — an offer that they rejected.

InfoW LLC, Prison Planet TV and IW Health filed for bankruptcy protection on April 17. Never Trump conservative Jonathan V. Last, in an article published by The Bulwark on April 30, slammed Jones’ bankruptcy filing as a sleazy maneuver designed to protect his net worth.

AP notes that although the Sandy Hook families recently agreed to drop InfoW LLC, Prison Planet TV and IW Health from their defamation lawsuits, the “lawsuits will continue against Jones himself and his largest moneymaking company, Free Speech Systems.”

According to AP, “The families and the U.S. Trustee’s Office — a Justice Department agency that oversees bankruptcy cases — had questioned the legitimacy of the three companies' bankruptcy filing and sought to throw out the case, saying it was only a tactic to delay the lawsuits. Jones' lawyers denied the allegations.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem

Judge Shoots Down Gov. Noem Over Mt. Rushmore Fireworks

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

A federal judge has rejected South Dakota GOP Gov. Kristi Noem's attempt to circumvent safety rules and hold a massive Independence Day fireworks show at Mount Rushmore. He said her request amounted to asking for "judicial activism."

"This country could use a good celebration of its foundational principles of democracy, liberty, and equal protection of law," wroteRoberto Lange, the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota.

But, he wrote on Wednesday, it would "be improper judicial activism for this Court to disregard settled law" for him to force the U.S. Parks Service to grant a permit for a July 4, 2021, show, as Noem demanded.

Noem blasted the ruling, again asserting that "The Biden Administration cancelled [sic] South Dakota's Mount Rushmore Fireworks Celebration on completely arbitrary grounds," and writing, "I am disappointed that the court gave cover to this unlawful action with today's decision." She vowed to appeal, in hopes of having fireworks next year.

The Park Service, part of the Department of the Interior, said in March that it would not grant a fireworks permit this year for South Dakota Department of Tourism for the Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

"Potential risks to the park itself and to the health and safety of employees and visitors associated with the fireworks demonstration continue to be a concern and are still being evaluated as a result of the 2020 event," it explained. "In addition, the park's many tribal partners expressly oppose fireworks at the Memorial."

Fireworks had been banned at the national park between 2009 and 2019, due to objections from Native American tribes (on whose sacred lands the monument was built) and concerns about wildfires. In 2020, Donald Trump and his administration ignored those — and coronavirus safety measures — to hold a massive Independence Day fireworks show and political speech at the site.

Noem sued Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in April, demanding a permit and falsely claiming that it was a purely arbitrary decision not to give her one.

"There was no reason given as to why we can't host the fireworks events. It wasn't based on environmental issues, it wasn't based on staffing issues or fire danger issues, it was just because they didn't want us to have it," she told reporters on May 3.

Just weeks before, Noem had declared "dangerous fire conditions" in the state.

Since becoming governor in January 2019, Noem has earned a national reputation for aggressively ignoring public health and safety.

She was one of the only governors who refused to issue any stay-at-home order as the COVID-19 pandemic hit her state in early 2020. As the situation worsened, she was also one of just a handful of governors who refusedto issue any mask requirements. More than 120,000 of her constituents tested positive — nearly 15 percent of the state's population.

In November, she railed against "absolutely false" claims by "some in the media" that her state had the highest number of new coronavirus cases per capita. At the time, her state had the second-highest number of new coronavirus cases per capita.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Judge Temporarily Blocks Shutdown Of Last Abortion Clinic In Missouri

Judge Temporarily Blocks Shutdown Of Last Abortion Clinic In Missouri

A judge blocked Missouri’s Republican-led government from shutting down the state’s last remaining abortion clinic on Friday, temporarily staving off a public health emergency for Missouri women.

Circuit Court Judge Michael Stelzer granted a temporary restraining order allowing the clinic, Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, to continue offering abortion services until June 4, when the case goes to a full hearing.

Missouri’s health department, which answers to Republican Gov. Mike Parson, has refused to renew the license that allows the clinic to perform abortions. That license was scheduled to expire at the end of the day on Friday, but Planned Parenthood sued Parson and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services to stop that from happening.

“Today is a victory for women across Missouri, but this fight is far from over,” Dr. Leana Wen, President & CEO, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement released Friday.

“We are glad that the governor has been prevented from putting women’s health and lives in danger—for now—and call on him to stop this egregious politicalization of public health in an attempt to ban all safe, legal abortion care in the state,” Wen said.

“This is a huge sigh of relief for the many patients who need access to safe, legal abortion in Missouri,” said Dr. Colleen McNicholas, an OB-GYN at the targeted clinic.

The license renewal was in question after state officials earlier in the year demanded to interview medical professionals who work at the clinic without disclosing the scope of their investigation.

Planned Parenthood said in a court filing that the health department was “unlawfully conditioning” its routine license renewal decision on Planned Parenthood complying with the investigation, and that the state refused to disclose the details of a patient complaint it was allegedly investigating.

Planned Parenthood told reporters on a conference call that when Missouri officials were asked if the interviews could result in criminal referrals or affect the medical licenses of physicians, they were told by the state that such outcomes were “not off the table.”

Wen described the state’s efforts as an “inappropriate and suspicious interrogation” designed to intimidate the doctors and medical trainees.

The attack on reproductive rights provoked an outpouring of public outrage. Thousands took to the streets in St. Louis on Thursday to protest Parson and his policy.

Missouri is one of several GOP-led states that have recently passed extreme, unconstitutional abortion bans. Last Friday, Parson signed a law criminalizing abortion after eight weeks, which is before many women even know that they are pregnant.

The law provides no exceptions for rape or incest, which is in line with the national Republican Party platform.

Women’s health care is under a sustained national attack from Republicans — but the court decision in Missouri is a reminder that, for now at least, the law is still on the side of women’s health and rights.

Published with permission of The American Independent. 

IMAGE: Dr. Leana Wen, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.