Trump’s Medicaid Cuts for Abortion Providers Blocked by Judge

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration is barred from pausing Medicaid reimbursements to health centers offering abortion care, saying states showed a likelihood of success in their claims a provision in the GOP’s tax-and-spending law unconstitutionally targets Planned Parenthood affiliates.

The preliminary injunction issued by Judge Indira Talwani of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts is the most direct ruling against the provision that Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health providers have warned would devastate Medicaid patients’ access to contraception, STI testing, cancer screenings, and other reproductive and sexual health care.

The latest decision grants an injunction request from a coalition of state attorneys general who argued the provision is impermissibly ambiguous and violates Congress’ spending clause power.

Attorneys general and public officials for California, Connecticut, and 20 other states and the District of Columbia argued in their July lawsuit that the Medicaid cuts would force states to leave patients without care, or devote millions of their own funds to try to keep health facilities intact.

Talwani previously paused enforcement of the law for all Planned Parenthood affiliates while litigation played out. The US Department of Health and Human Services successfully appealed that ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

The state officials had argued in the suit that the provision would increase Medicaid costs for states—$30 million over the next five years and $52 million over the next 10 years.

The Trump administration, as well as congressional Republicans and anti-abortion advocates, have defended the cuts as a means to crack down on federal funding for abortion care providers, especially after the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

The Hyde Amendment already prohibits Medicaid funds from being used to provide abortion care. Planned Parenthood and other providers that offer abortion care maintain that they strictly abide by this restriction by only using federal funding for other reproductive health care.

Maine Family Planning has also sued the HHS over the Medicaid cuts, as it also faces enforcement under the law. A federal judge in Maine issued a ruling in August declining to issue a preliminary injunction protecting the network of Maine family planning providers from the cuts. Maine Family Planning unsuccessfully appealed that order to the First Circuit.

Planned Parenthood has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Law is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.

The case is California v. HHS, D. Mass., No. 1:25-cv-12118, motion for declaratory and injunctive relief granted 12/2/25.