Justices John Roberts & Samuel Alito questioned Joshua Turner, attorney for Idaho's Office of the Attorney General, during Wednesday’s oral arguments in Moyle v. United States & Idaho v. United States.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you, Counsel.
00:03Is there, what happens if a dispute arises with respect to whether or not the doctor
00:09was within the confines of Idaho law or wasn't?
00:13Is the doctor subjected to review by a medical authority?
00:20Exactly how is that evaluated?
00:22Because it's an obvious concern if you have an individual exception for a doctor and we're
00:26having a debate about is that covered by your submission that nothing in Idaho law
00:34prohibits complying with EMTALA, who makes the decision whether or not something's within
00:41or without?
00:42So, I mean, I imagine there are two ways the law can be enforced, or at least two.
00:46The Board of Medicine has a licensing oversight over a doctor, and the Idaho Supreme Court
00:52made clear that that doctor's medical judgment is not going to be judged based on an objective
00:56standard of what a reasonable doctor would do.
00:58That's not the standard.
01:00The second way would be if a...
01:01What is the standard?
01:03The doctor's good faith medical judgment, which is subjective.
01:06And that's not subject to review by any medical board?
01:09If there's a complaint against the doctor that his standards don't comply and say he's
01:14the only doctor at the particular emergency room and he has his own particular standard?
01:19What the Idaho Supreme Court has said is that you may consider another doctor's opinion
01:24only on the question of was it a pretextual medical judgment, not a good faith one.
01:31Justice Thomas?
01:32Justice Alito?
01:33Well, I would think that the concept of good faith medical judgment must take into account
01:42some objective standards, but it would leave a certain amount of leeway for an individual
01:49doctor.
01:50And that's how I interpreted what the State Supreme Court said.
01:55Now, you have been presented here today with very quick summaries of cases and asked to
02:06provide a snap judgment about what would be appropriate in those particular cases.
02:11And honestly, I think you've hardly been given an opportunity to answer some of the hypotheticals,
02:18but would you agree with me that if a medical doctor who is an expert in this field were
02:25asked bang, bang, bang, what would you do in these particular circumstances, which I
02:29am now going to enumerate, the doctor would say, wait, this is not how I practice medicine.
02:35I need to know a lot more about the individual case.
02:39Would you agree with that?
02:40Absolutely.
02:41And ACOG has, in the case of PROM, for example, ACOG doesn't just knee-jerk say an abortion
02:47is the standard of care.
02:49ACOG itself says that expectant management is oftentimes the appropriate standard of
02:54care.
02:55And so these are difficult questions that turn on the facts that are on the ground between
02:59the doctor as he is assessing them with his medical judgment that he's bringing to bear,
03:03but is also necessarily constrained by Idaho law, just like every other area of the practice
03:09of medicine.
03:10State law confines doctor judgment in some ways.