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Tag: courts
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.


Fulton County Releases Trump Mugshot After Booking

Fulton County Releases Trump Mugshot After Booking

Donald Trump got special treatment in New York and federal courts, which didn’t make him suffer the indignity of a mugshot. Fulton County, Georgia, is different. Over the past two days, we’ve seen the mugshots of one after another of Trump’s co-defendants in racketeering and other charges stemming from their efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Now it’s the time for the big one: Trump has surrendered at the Fulton County Jail, and now we get to see one of the main pictures he’ll be remembered by for the rest of his life—and possibly thereafter.


Trump is charged with 13 felonies in Fulton County, including racketeering, filing false documents, conspiracy to commit forgery, and others. He was to pay a $200,000 bond, also a first for him.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trial Judge Restricts Trump's Threats, Warns Of 'Speedy Trial'

Trial Judge Restricts Trump's Threats, Warns Of 'Speedy Trial'

The federal judge in charge of Donald Trump’s trial over his efforts to overturn the presidential election he lost agreed to both U.S. Dept. of Justice prosecutors’ requests and the ex-president’s legal team’s requests in determining the bounds of a protective order to be imposed on the indicted defendant.

“Mr. Trump, like every American, has a First Amendment right to free speech, but that right is not absolute. In a criminal case such as this one, the defendant’s free speech is subject to the rules,” U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan said, as CNN reports. “Without a protective order, a party could release information that could taint the jury pool, intimidate witnesses or others involved in some aspect of the case, or otherwise interfere with the ‘process of justice.'”

“The existence of a political campaign is not going to have any bearing on my decision,” Judge Chutkan told attorneys for both sides, NBC News reports. “I intend to keep politics out of this.”

MSNBC executive producer Kyle Griffin, citing NBC News adds: “Judge Chutkan says Trump has free speech rights, but his campaign will have to ‘yield to the orderly administration of justice.'”

“If that means that he can’t say exactly what he wants to say about people who may be witnesses in this case, that’s how it’s going to have to be,” Griffin/NBC News report the judge said.

“The defendant’s desire to conduct a campaign, to respond to political opponents, has to yield,” Chutkan also said, according to CNN.

CNN legal analyst and former U.S. Ambassador Norm Eisen declared: “Single most important moment in the hearing on the Trump protective order so far: Chutkan says she ‘cannot & will not factor’ into her decision the effect on political campaigns for either side.”

He adds, “If she applies that rule to the scheduling order we are going to trial in Jan. 2024.”

MSNBC on-air reports Judge Chutkan has ruled that the “protective order will only apply to sensitive materials and not to all discovery in this case.”

Watch below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Donald Trump

'This Man Cannot Shut Up': Trump Headed Toward Judicial Gag Order (VIDEO)

The judge in Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 election conspiracy case is likely to issue a gag order in response to the former president’s incendiary rhetoric, a legal expert said Monday.

Retired California Superior Court Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, during an appearance on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins,” said one of the former president’s social media posts in particular was “clearly a threat.”

Cordell’s comments came in response to a question from Collins over whether Trump’s all-caps Truth Social post on Friday in which hewrote "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!" would likely influence Judge Tanya Chutkan’s decision over whether to issue a protective order.

“I don't know necessarily that that quote impacts the protective order, but that certainly would get me thinking if I were the trial judge about a gag order in this case,” Cordell said.

“It's clearly a threat, and a good trial judge doesn't just look at the law, you use common sense.”

Cordell said the timing of Trump’s post, the day after he was arraigned, would also likely figure into how a judge would look at the rhetoric.

Cordell said she believes a gag order is likely and that “my guess is Trump would violate it in a heartbeat and then we'll see what the judge does in terms of consequences for violating yet another court order.”

Seeking clarification, Collins asked: “So you think there will be a gag order here? At least you think that there should be?”

“I absolutely can see it coming because this man cannot shut up. He's a ‘chatty Charlie’ and he's going to just talk and talk and he really doesn't care about rules that say you can speak or cannot speak,” Cordell said.

“So this is where the test of a good trial judge comes about. If you're going to have a fair trial, it's going to be by the rules set by that person in the black robe. And if the rules are you do not talk about this other than in the court, because it's not punishment it's to ensure fair trial. If that doesn't happen, there have to be immediate consequences to violating a court order.

“Only in that way can everyone have respect for the system.”

Watch the video below or click here.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.