Idaho officials don't have to destroy information right away that came from tracking collars placed on wolves and elk by a helicopter crew that landed illegally in a wilderness area where engines are prohibited.
A federal judge earlier this week agreed to delay his order to destroy the information collected from the collars while the Idaho Department of Fish and Game appeals to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill rejected the agency's request to lift his ban on using any of the information.
In this Jan. 14, 1995 file photo, a wolf leaps across a road into the wilds of Central Idaho.
"We're proceeding with the appeal to ultimately allow us to use these scientific data in future decisions," Fish and Game spokesman Roger Phillips said.
The agency in January 2016 put collars on four wolves and 57 elk in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. Western Watersheds Project and other conservation groups sued.
Winmill ruled that the U.S. Forest Service broke environmental laws by authorizing Fish and Game to land helicopters in the wilderness to collar elk. Idaho also collared four wolves in an action the Forest Service didn't authorize. Fish and Game blamed miscommunication with a helicopter crew.
The judge said the case was such an extreme violation that he ordered the destruction of data from the collars.
In delaying his order for the appeal, Winmill wrote that "while the court is confident in its ruling, the circuit (court) may disagree." He said Fish and Game would be harmed if his order was overturned but the information had already been destroyed.
Tim Preso, an attorney for environmental law firm Earthjustice that's handling the case, said the groups will press for the destruction of the information in what could be a precedent-setting case for wilderness areas.
"This is a case about an illegal action in wilderness creating the threat of further harm to the wilderness," he said. "If they can do that in one of the premier wilderness areas in the Lower 48, then they can do it anywhere."
The 3,700-square-mile (9,600-square kilometer) mountainous and inaccessible River of No Return is considered a sanctuary from which young wolves disperse in search of new territory. Idaho officials have previously targeted that population by sending in a state-hired hunter in 2014, killing nine wolves.
Idaho officials say the collaring is part of a statewide elk study. They have been concerned that wolves in wilderness are having a detrimental effect on elk populations pursued by sport hunters.
But environmental groups contend that wilderness areas are specifically set aside to allow for natural prey-predator dynamics free of human interference and that the River of No Return is one of the few wilderness areas large enough for that to happen.
Besides attorneys, only one person at Fish and Game has access to the information from the collars, Phillips said, adding that it's not being used to make wildlife management decisions.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court heard its first test on Wednesday of state abortion bans that have been enacted since the court upended the Roe v. Wade constitutional right to abortion. While the current case involves an Idaho abortion ban, the court’s ruling could have implications beyond that state.
Idaho lawmakers have banned abortion except when a mother’s life is at risk. The Biden administration says the state law conflicts with a federal law requiring emergency room doctors to stabilize patients, no matter what, even if that means an abortion.
How the court will rule is uncertain. The justices could make a major ruling — or they could rule narrowly on how Idaho’s state law interacts with the federal law, the the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act ( EMTALA ).
A look at the key points in Wednesday’s arguments.
Attorneys for both sides warned that the justices’ ruling could affect women and doctors far beyond Idaho, changing how emergency rooms treat patients in many other states.
“There are 22 states with abortion laws on the books,” said Attorney Joshua N. Turner, who represented Idaho. “This isn’t going to end with Idaho. … This question is going to come up in state after state.”
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing for the Biden administration, cautioned that other states could pass laws limiting how emergency rooms offer other services, which could mean trouble for more patients when they go to a hospital.
“This effectively allows states to take any particular treatment they don’t want their hospitals to provide and dump those patients out of state,” she warned. “And you can imagine what would happen if every state started to take this approach.”
Medical “what-ifs” peppered the arguments, sometimes turning personal: What if a woman’s water breaks early in her pregnancy, exposing her to serious infection risk at a point when the fetus can’t survive outside the womb? What if continuing the pregnancy would subject a pregnant person to organ failure, or cause permanent infertility?
Idaho's Turner told the court that those would be “very case by case” situations – a response that left Justice Amy Coney Barrett “shocked.”
Barrett, one of the conservatives who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, pressed Turner on when a prosecutor might bring charges against a doctor for providing an abortion. Experts whom Turner had cited, Barrett said, had told the court that doctors who performed abortions in those cases would be protected.
Turner agreed and said that doctors in Idaho could use their “good faith,” medical judgment but Barrett pressed him further.
“What if the prosecutor thought differently?” Barrett asked. “What if the prosecutor thought, well, I don’t think any good faith doctor could draw that conclusion.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, part of the court’s liberal minority, asked Turner to consider how the federal law requires hospitals to treat patients for more common medical emergencies, like the diabetes that she has had since childhood.
What if, she said, the state banned treating diabetes with insulin?
“Federal law would say you can’t do that,’” said Sotomayor. “Objective medically accepted standards of care require the treatment of diabetics with insulin. Idaho is saying unless the doctor can say that this person’s death is likely, as opposed to serious illness, they can’t perform abortion.”
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito was particularly alarmed by Idaho’s argument that emergency rooms could be forced to provide abortions if a pregnant patient in mental distress demanded one. The state has only raised this as a hypothetical, and not provided an actual example of a doctor being in this position.
“Does health mean only physical health or does it also mean mental health?” Alito asked Prelogar, noting that he was trying to get her on the record about it if future incidents arise.
Prelogar said it’s not the administration’s view that an abortion would be provided as emergency medical care if a woman was suicidal or depressed. She said that the hospital would be required to treat such patients in other ways, dealing with their mental health episode.
“That could never lead to pregnancy termination because that is not the accepted standard of practice to treat any mental health emergency,” Prelogar said.
Congress passed its federal law mandating that emergency rooms stabilize or treat patients in 1986, after reports that private hospitals were offloading patients – many of them without health insurance and in bad condition – on public hospitals.
Nearly 40 years later, the attorneys and justices spent some of Wednesday diving into why Congress crafted the law.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh pressed Prelogar on why the law was initially created. Idaho’s officials have argued that the law was supposed to ensure patients without health insurance were treated, and should not be used as a way for the federal government to police whether doctors perform abortions in an emergency.
“The text of the statute which says in no uncertain terms, here is the fundamental guarantee: If you have an emergency medical condition and you go to an ER in this country, they have to stabilize you,” Prelogar said.
But Turner raised another conundrum for the court about Congress’ intent: Why would doctors be required to perform abortions when the text of the law calls on them to treat “unborn children.”
“It would be a strange thing for Congress to have regard for the unborn child and yet also be mandating termination of unborn children,” he told the court.
It’s unclear exactly where the Supreme Court will land, but the court had earlier allowed Idaho’s abortion ban to be fully enforced while litigation continues.
That means at least five members of the court voted to put on hold a lower court’s ruling that the federal law overrides Idaho’s abortion ban in medical emergencies. So the Biden administration was facing a tough road in persuading the court to uphold that ruling.
Six conservative justices all have cast votes to limit abortion access, including five who voted less than two years ago to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Alito seemed most likely to side with Idaho on Wednesday. The liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor were most favorable to the administration.
The outcome likely turns on the votes of the other three members of the court — Chief Justice John Roberts and Barrett and Kavanaugh.
Barrett and Kavanaugh voted to overturn Roe.
——
Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.
Abortion rights activists rally outside the Supreme Court, Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador talks to reporters outside the Supreme Court, Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Anti-Abortion activists rally outside the Supreme Court, Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Abortion rights activists rally outside the Supreme Court, Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
