Navigating EMTALA Rules
Compliance Perspectives: Healthcare Compliance at the Border
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has rescinded its 2022 guidance and accompanying letter that reinforced hospitals' obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) to provide...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently published a press release rescinding its June 2022 guidance concerning hospitals’ obligations to pregnant women under the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act...more
The U.S. Senate will likely release additional sections of the reconciliation package this week. It is unlikely the Senate Committee on Finance, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, will hold a markup on its portion of the...more
On June 3, 2025, the Trump administration announced (the Announcement) that it would no longer follow Biden-era guidance (the Guidance) that directed hospitals to provide emergency abortions to pregnant women in emergency...more
On June 3, 2025, the Trump Administration announced that it rescinded the Biden Administration’s guidance issued on July 11, 2022. The Biden Administration’s guidance advises hospital providers that, under the federal...more
In a 60-page decision issued on March 20, 2025, Judge Lynn Winmill, a Federal District Judge for the District of Idaho, granted a preliminary injunction that enjoins Attorney General Raúl Labrador and his officers, employees,...more
An Idaho federal court has resolved the tension between that state’s restrictive abortion law and the federal Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) in favor of a hospital system’s obligation to stabilize pregnant...more
Last week, the US District Court for the District of Idaho entered another preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of Idaho’s Total Abortion Ban (IC § 18-622) if the abortion is necessary to stabilize a pregnant woman...more
Access to reproductive health care has been a part of the national debate for years, and even more so since 2022 when the US Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs overturning decades of precedent established under Roe v....more
Iowa’s fetal heartbeat law, House File 732, which was signed into law by Governor Kim Reynolds in 2023, will go into effect on Monday, July 29. The law has been temporarily enjoined from enforcement since last July, however a...more
On June 27, 2024, the United States Supreme Court temporarily restored the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) exception to Idaho’s abortion ban. As a result, Idaho hospitals may perform abortions in EMTALA...more
The Supreme Court of the United States issued four decisions today: Moyle v. United States; Idaho v. United States, Nos. 23-726, 23-727: After granting certioriari to decide whether the Emergency Medical Treatment and...more
On June 27, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Moyle v. United States, No. 23-726, and Idaho v. United States, No. 23-727, holding the writs of certiorari before judgment granted to hear the cases were improvidently...more
The Supreme Court’s day started with the specter of yet another leak of a reproductive rights decision having occurred....more
Mifepristone is safe for now. On June 13, 2024, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the plaintiffs — doctors and medical associations alike — lacked standing to challenge 2000 and 2019 FDA approvals of mifepristone (brand...more
The Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) at the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) recently issued final regulations (“Reproductive Health Care Rule”) under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of...more
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in the consolidated cases of Moyle v. United States, Case No. 23-726 and Idaho v. United States, Case No. 23-727. These cases asked the justices to consider whether the...more
As we’ve discussed in previous alerts (here and here), after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion and returned the question of abortion regulation to the states,...more
The United States Supreme Court ended the Emergency Treatment and Active Labor Act (“EMTALA”) exception to Idaho’s total abortion ban for now. The net effect is that Idaho’s criminal abortion ban now applies even in EMTALA...more
At least for the foreseeable future, Idaho’s total abortion ban is unenforceable to the extent it conflicts with the federal Emergency Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). In other words, when EMTALA applies, a physician...more
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ended the EMTALA exception to Idaho’s total abortion ban, I.C. 18-622. In 2022, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) sued the state of Idaho, claiming that EMTALA preempted the total...more
On May 1st, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced investigations into two hospitals that did not provide necessary stabilizing treatment to a pregnant individual experiencing an emergency medical...more
On May 1, 2023, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) announced two investigations of hospitals that failed to offer necessary stabilizing care to a pregnant individual experiencing an emergency medical...more