Supreme Court Rules Medicaid Can Defund Planned Parenthood

(The Post Millennial)—The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Thursday that states are allowed to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood. The ruling came in response to a case out of South Carolina.

The case centered around whether patients on Medicaid, a government health insurance program for low-income patients, can sue in order to choose their own qualified healthcare provider. South Carolina was sued under Section 1983 after the state blocked Medicaid funds from going to Planned Parenthood in 2018, citing law prohibiting public funds for abortions.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the opinion for the court, “Section 1983 permits private plaintiffs to sue for violations of federal spending-power statutes only in ‘atypical’ situations … where the provision in question ‘clear[ly]’ and ‘unambiguous[ly]’ confers an individual ‘right.’” He wrote that the law in question “is not such a statute.”

“This case concerns one of the conditions state plans must meet. Located in §1396a(a)(23)(A), Medicaid’s any-qualified-provider provision, as it is sometimes called, requires States to ensure that ‘any individual eligible for medical assistance … may obtain’ it ‘from any [provider] qualified to perform the service … who undertakes to provide’ it. The provision does not define the term ‘qualified,’ perhaps because States have traditionally exercised primary responsibility over “matters of health and safety,” including the regulation of the practice of medicine,” Gorsuch wrote.

In response to the 2018 announcement that South Carolina would not allow Planned Parenthood to participate in the state’s Medicaid program, “Planned Parenthood and one of its patients, Julie Edwards, sued the director of the State’s Department of Health and Human Services. They argued that South Carolina’s exclusion of Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program violated the any-qualified-provider provision.”

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