BOISE, ID – The U.S. Department of Justice plans to dismiss its lawsuit against the state of Idaho that would allow physicians to provide abortion care in emergency situations without facing prosecution, according to a court document filed on Tuesday.

Attorneys for St. Luke’s Health System, Idaho’s largest hospital network, filed a separate lawsuit in January in anticipation of Republican President Donald Trump’s administration dropping the case, which former Democratic President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice filed in 2022. That lawsuit argued Idaho’s near-total abortion ban conflicts with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which mandates that individuals who come to the emergency rooms of hospitals that accept Medicare funding must be given stabilizing treatment.

Wendy Olson, lead attorney representing St. Luke’s in their lawsuit, filed a motion for a temporary restraining order in U.S. District Court on Tuesday, saying she received an email from a Justice Department attorney Monday that said the United States would like to “dismiss the claims” in the case by Wednesday. The district court had already scheduled a Wednesday hearing to determine whether to issue another injunction blocking the state from enforcing the abortion ban in emergency situations and to consider the state’s motion to dismiss the case entirely.

Late Tuesday, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill granted the plaintiff’s request for the restraining order, and said the hearing Wednesday afternoon will proceed to consider a new preliminary injunction. While a restraining order would typically only last until the hearing date, Winmill wrote that the court will keep it in place for longer in this instance.

“(This) will allow the court time to fully consider the arguments offered at the hearing,” he wrote.

Dan Estes, spokesperson for Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, told States Newsroom via email that the office would release a statement after receiving official confirmation of the DOJ’s intention to drop the case.

But in a response to Olson’s motion, Labrador’s office called the request from St. Luke’s a “brazen attempt to declare that (the hospital) is above the law” in asking the court to declare that it is not required to comply with Idaho’s criminal statutes. Physicians face up to five years in prison and loss of their medical license for performing an abortion at any stage of pregnancy. While Idaho’s law contains an exception to save the pregnant person’s life, physicians have said it is too difficult from a medical perspective to determine when they can intervene to preserve health without fear of prosecution. Delays in care can result in conditions such as kidney damage and impaired reproductive organ function.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit has ping-ponged between U.S District Court, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court in the two years since. The Supreme Court decided it was premature to rule on the case and returned it to the appellate level, where a ruling from a panel of judges is pending. If the federal government’s move to dismiss the case is granted, that case will no longer move forward and the order blocking Idaho from prosecuting emergency room doctors would also end.

St. Luke’s purpose of filing the separate lawsuit in January was to prevent any gap between when the DOJ dropped the case and when the court could rule on a new injunction. If the injunction is lifted at any time, the hospital has said, any patient seeking emergency care who might have to terminate their pregnancy to preserve their health would need to be airlifted out of state where that health care is permitted. Out-of-state transfers happened six times between January and April 2024 before the injunction, hospital officials said, compared to one in the entire year before.

“It is critical that there not be any period during which the Idaho law is not enjoined to the extent it conflicts with EMTALA,” Olson’s filing said. “Even a short period without an injunction would require Idaho hospitals to train their staff about the change in legal obligations, distracting them from providing medical care to their patients, and would once again require them to airlift patients out of state.”

The filing from Labrador’s office, written by Lead Deputy Attorney General Brian Church, said the motion for the temporary restraining order should be denied and the court should instead issue a decision at Wednesday’s hearing.

“Training staff on the legal requirements applicable to a hospital setting is no harm at all,” Church argued, calling that argument frivolous. “It is merely a fact of life for hospitals operating in today’s legal landscape.”

Judge Winmill, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1995, will preside over the hearing for the St. Luke’s lawsuit at 3 p.m. on Wednesday in Boise.

This story first appeared on Idaho Capital Sun.