Supreme Court Backs State Bid to Defund Planned Parenthood (2)

The US Supreme Court ruled for South Carolina in its bid to exclude a Planned Parenthood affiliate from Medicaid in a decision that paves the way for other states to do the same.

In a 6-3 decision on Thursday, the court tossed out an appeals court ruling that had prohibited the state from removing Planned Parenthood South Atlantic after it was sued by the provider and a Medicaid recipient.

The justices said the Medicaid Act doesn’t give beneficiaries a privately enforceable right to choose a specific provider. The decision makes it easier for states to defund Planned Parenthood.

Delivering the opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch said civil rights law allows private plaintiffs to sue when their legal rights are violated, but they can only sue when federal spending-power statutes are violated in “atypical situations.”

The Medicaid Act provision at issue known as the “any-qualified provider provision,” 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.

Gorsuch said the provision has to clearly and unambiguously confer an individual right to sue and the Medicaid provision doesn’t do that.

‘Purely Political’

The case wasn’t a direct challenge to abortion rights, but the state decided to exclude Planned Parenthood South Atlantic from its Medicaid program because it provides the procedure.

Though state and federal law generally prohibit Medicaid from covering abortions, South Carolina said it didn’t want Medicaid dollars paying for administrative overhead that would free up other funds for the procedure.

“This is purely a political decision to deny patients the right to come to our offices because the name Planned Parenthood is on the door,” Dr. Katherine Farris, the affiliate’s chief medical officer, said in a call with reporters. She noted the state never claimed Planned Parenthood South Atlantic wasn’t a qualified provider.

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.

Anti-abortion advocates like CatholicVote heralded the decision, claiming in a statement that taxpayers have been funding “an industry built on the destruction of innocent human life” for too long.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson (R) applauded the court in a statement for rejecting Planned Parenthood’s attempt “to turn Medicaid into a weapon to force their agenda.”

All three members of the court’s liberal wing dissented. Writing for the group, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said South Carolina asked the court to hollow out a civil rights law to “evade liability for violating the rights of its Medicaid recipients to choose their own doctor.”

The decision, she said “thwarts Congress’s will twice over: once, in dulling the tool Congress created for enforcing all federal rights, and again in vitiating one of those rights altogether.”

Jackson warns that in weakening these civil rights protections the court’s decision will likely result in tangible harm to real people.

“At a minimum, it will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them,” she said. “And, more concretely, it will strip those South Carolinians—and countless other Medicaid recipients around the country—of a deeply personal freedom: the ‘ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable.’”

Georgetown Law professor Michele Goodwin said Medicaid was enacted in part to dismantle racial discrimination in health-care.

The court’s decision is a strike against the legacy of civil rights being forged in the United States, she said.

Dog Whistle

Planned Parenthood South Atlantic stressed the court’s decision is limited to South Carolina, but Goodwin called the state’s decision to kick Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program and the court’s response to it a “dog whistle” for other states.

It opens the door for other governors, who are similarly inclined, to do the same as South Carolina, she said, adding state officials could go beyond abortion if they’re wary of other medical procedures.

Planned Parenthood South Atlantic also stressed the ruling doesn’t immediately take effect. For now, it said patients in South Carolina, including Medicaid recipients who account for 3.5% of its patients this year, can continue to come to its health centers for preventive care.

Peyton Humphreville, a senior staff attorney for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the group is evaluating what options it has for its remaining claims in the case and how it can continue to keep fighting.

The case is Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, U.S., No. 23-1275, 6/26/25.