Today’s decision by the Supreme Court is a big and potentially fatal loss for Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider. Scanning the headlines about this decision, Axios’ gets it right: “Supreme Court ruling on patients rights’ could devastate Planned Parenthood.”
The case decided today is called Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and it arose out of South Carolina. The decision says that states can cut off abortion providers from receiving Medicaid funds for non-abortion services.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed South Carolina to bar Planned Parenthood’s access to federal Medicaid funding for non-abortion services. The decision allows states to ban the organization from getting Medicaid reimbursements for cancer screenings and other care not related to abortion.
At issue was a provision of the federal Medicaid law that guarantees Medicaid patients the ability to choose their doctors, or in the words of the statute, they are entitled to “any qualified and willing provider.” South Carolina, however, maintained that it could disqualify Medicaid providers for “any reason that state law allows.” Or as Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, put it, “Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize abortion providers who are in direct opposition to their beliefs.”
On Thursday the Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, agreed.
This decision has been a long time coming. South Carolina’s governor set this in motion with an executive order back in 2018, long before the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade.
,,,seven years ago, South Carolina’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster, issued an executive order that directed the state’s health department to deem abortion providers unqualified to provide family-planning services under Medicaid and terminate their enrollment agreements.
In response, the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services notified Planned Parenthood South Atlantic that its provider agreements were being cancelled because it was no longer qualified to provide medical services to Medicaid beneficiaries. The affiliate has clinics in Charleston and Columbia, and offers prenatal and postpartum services, along with physical exams and screenings for cancer and other health conditions.
In the wake of the state’s decision to boot Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program, Julie Edwards, a patient who received medical services from the organization, and Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit under federal civil rights law to challenge the move.
Edwards argued that South Carolina’s termination of Planned Parenthood’s agreement violated her right to choose her provider under the Medicaid Act.
A district judge ruled in Planned Parenthood’s favor and then the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals also agreed that Julie Edwards had a right to sue under federal civil rights law. That meant South Carolina could not cut off Planned Parenthood from Medicaid funding. The case was appealed and in early April the Supreme Court heard oral arguments. The debate wasn’t over abortion but over whether or not the Medicaid Act implied a right to sue.
John Bursch, a lawyer for the conservative advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, represented the state. He told the justices that for laws enacted pursuant to Congress’s spending clause power, “clear rights-creating language is critical to creating private rights. Congress did not use” such language in the “any qualified provider” provision, he stressed. Indeed, he noted, Congress “knows how to clearly confer a private right to choose a provider” when it wants to do so, as it did in the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act.
Justice Clarence Thomas asked Bursch whether the word “right” is “absolutely necessary in order to determine whether or not a right has been created” under the “any qualified provider” provision.
Bursch answered that “if Congress wants to be clear, ‘right’ is the best word, but we would take its functional equivalent” – for example, “entitlement” or “privilege.”…
Nicole Saharsky, who represented Planned Parenthood, told the justices that there is no dispute that South Carolina violated the Medicaid Act when it denied Julie Edwards “her choice of a qualified and willing provider.” “The only question,” she said, “is whether she can do something about it, to sue under” federal civil rights laws.
The “any qualified provider” provision, Saharsky maintained, “uses mandatory, individual-centric, rights-creating language. The only thing it doesn’t do,” she said, “is use the word ‘right.’ And this Court has repeatedly said that magic words aren’t required.”
Today we know that the Justices split along ideological lines with the 3 liberals saying Edwards had a right to sue and the six conservatives deciding she did not. The implications for Planned Parenthood are serious because this will likely encourage more states to cut Planned Parenthood off.
The decision in favor of South Carolina, which broke along ideological lines with the conservative justices backing the state, may embolden more states to remove Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid networks. Texas, Arkansas and Missouri have already done so.
Also, the Big Beautiful Bill contains a provision which would cut Planned Parenthood off from Medicaid. If it passes, Planned Parenthood says the result would be about a third of its locations closing permanently.
Planned Parenthood says a provision barring it from receiving Medicaid funds could lead to about one-third of its health centers closing.
The group said about 200 centers are at risk — most of them in states where abortion is legal. In those states, the number of Planned Parenthood centers could be cut in half…
“We’re in a fight for survival — not just for Planned Parenthood, but for the ability of everyone to get high-quality, non-judgmental health care,” Planned Parenthood President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America celebrated the provision, saying “Congress took a big step toward stopping taxpayer funding of the Big Abortion industry.”
Planned Parenthood has been on life support for a while now. The entire industry is struggling and cutting off Medicaid would be a major blow. Prior to today’s decision, it was likely that even if the BBB passed there would be years of legal wrangling ahead over this issue. Now that this decision has been issued there will be no legal wrangling at all. If congress cuts Planned Parenthood off from Medicaid reimbursement, it should just end.
