27 June 2025 - Supreme Court lets red states target Planned Parenthood funding
Supreme Court ruling allows states to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood
Lindsay Whitehurst (PBS News, 26/06/2025)
A divided Supreme Court allowed states to cut off Medicaid money to Planned Parenthood in a ruling handed down Thursday amid a wider Republican-backed push to defund the country’s biggest abortion provider. The case centers on funding for other health care services Planned Parenthood provides in South Carolina, but the ruling could have broader implications for Medicaid patients. The court split 6-3 in the opinion, with the three liberal justices dissenting.
States can block Medicaid money for health care at Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court says
Lindsay Whitehurst (AP News, 26/06/2025)
States can block the country’s biggest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, from receiving Medicaid money for health services such as contraception and cancer screenings, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday. The 6-3 opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by the rest of the court’s conservatives was not directly about abortion, but it comes as Republicans back a wider push across the country to defund the organization. It closes off Planned Parenthood’s primary court path to keeping Medicaid funding in place: patient lawsuits. The justices found that while Medicaid law allows people choose their own provider, that does not make it a right enforceable in court. The court split along ideological lines, with the three liberals dissenting in the case from South Carolina.
Most Planned Parenthood patients are insured through Medicaid. The Supreme Court just undercut that.
Shefali Luthra (The 19th News, 26/06/2025)
South Carolina can block Planned Parenthood clinics from receiving Medicaid funds, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision on Thursday — a major step toward the longtime conservative goal of “defunding” the nation’s largest family planning provider. The case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Carolina, concerns a 2018 order from the state’s Republican governor that barred any clinic providing abortions from getting payments through Medicaid. Medicaid, which insures low-income Americans, does not cover abortions in most states, including South Carolina.
The Supreme Court’s disastrous new abortion decision, explained
Ian Millhiser (VOX, 26/06/2025)
Federal law says that “any individual eligible for medical assistance” from a state Medicaid program may obtain that care “from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the service or services required.” In other words, all Medicaid patients have a right to choose their doctor, as long as they choose a health provider competent enough to provide the care they seek. On Thursday, however, the Republican justices ruled, in Medina v. Planned Parenthood, that Medicaid patients may not choose their health provider. And then they went much further. Thursday’s decision radically reorders all of federal Medicaid law, rendering much of it unenforceable.
Planned Parenthood logo. Wikipedia, Public domain.
