For the past decade, a blockbuster religion law case has been a feature of every Supreme Court term. The Court dramatically eased the ability of employers to claim religious exemptions. It overturned long-standing Establishment Clause precedent. And it revolutionized Free Exercise Clause doctrine to favor objectors to public health measures and antidiscrimination laws. With no religious liberty claim on the docket, the 2023-24 term promised to be the exception.
Nevertheless, in a pair of abortion cases, the Court took the opportunity to broadly interpret federal conscience law to override patients’ rights to emergency care. The first, Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM), challenged the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, the abortion pill. The second, Moyle v. United States, involved the conflict between state abortion bans and the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal law that requires life- and health-saving care, including abortion, in emergency departments. Neither seemed to implicate the Church Amendment of 1973, which allows individual providers and institutions to refuse to perform or participate in abortion for religious or moral reasons.
