Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected Planned Parenthood’s challenge to South Carolina’s attempt to bar the organization from participating in its Medicaid program, clearing the way for the state to strip the organization of Medicaid funds.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in the case of Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic to find that Planned Parenthood and a patient cannot sue the state of South Carolina under federal civil rights law to enforce a provision of the Medicaid Act that aims to ensure a beneficiary can obtain medical care from the provider of their choosing. Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the opinion for the court. The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, were in dissent.
The court’s conservative majority reversed a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit that allowed Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit against state officials to move forward and prevented South Carolina from excluding the organization from its Medicaid program.
The ruling is likely to pave the way for more states to exclude Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs, a move that anti-abortion rights have been pushing for several years.
“[T]he decision whether to let private plaintiffs enforce a new statutory right poses delicate questions of public policy. New rights for some mean new duties for others. And private enforcement actions, meritorious or not, can force governments to direct money away from public services and spend it instead on litigation,” Gorsuch wrote. “The job of resolving how best to weigh those competing costs and benefits belongs to the people’s elected representatives, not unelected judges charged with applying the law as they find it.”
In a dissent joined by Sotomayor and Kagan, Jackson accused the court’s majority of weakening landmark civil rights protections that Congress enacted after the Civil War, which allow citizen to seek redress in federal court for alleged deprivation of their rights.
“[T]oday’s decision is likely to result in tangible harm to real people,” Jackson wrote. “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. 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.’ The court today disregards Congress’s express desire to prevent that very outcome.”
The White House applauded the Supreme Court’s decision, with spokesman Harrison Fields calling it a “major victory for common sense” that “underscores the president’s longstanding position that abortion policies should be determined by the states and that taxpayers should never be responsible for funding elective abortions.”
Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic
The question before the court was a narrow one, involving whether a Medicaid beneficiary could sue to enforce their ability to seek care from the qualified and willing provider of their choosing, known as the any-qualified-provider requirement.
The legal wrangling over South Carolina’s attempt to stop public dollars from going to a Planned Parenthood affiliate in the state began in 2018, four years before the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade.
In South Carolina, abortion is banned after six weeks gestation, and Planned Parenthood provides abortion services outside of Medicaid only as allowed under state law. Additionally, federal law bars Medicaid from paying for abortions except in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother.
But 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 federal district judge ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood, finding that South Carolina likely violated the any-qualified-provider provision when it excluded Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ultimately allowed the suit to proceed and prevented South Carolina from keeping Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program.
The dispute before the Supreme Court did not involve abortion, but it came to the high court amid a push by several Republican-led states to block Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds.
Paige Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, criticized the ruling but said the clinic will continue to offering care in South Carolina, including to Medicaid beneficiaries.
“Today’s decision is a grave injustice that strikes at the very bedrock of American freedom and promises to send South Carolina deeper into a health care crisis,” she said in a statement. “Twice, justices of this Court denied to even hear this case because Gov. McMaster’s intent is clear: weaponize anti-abortion sentiment to deprive communities with low incomes of basic health care.”
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, warned that attacks on the organization will likely continue and put at risk patients’ access to health care services.
“Today, the Supreme Court once again sided with politicians who believe they know better than you, who want to block you from seeing your trusted health care provider and making your own health care decisions,” she said in a statement. “And the consequences are not theoretical in South Carolina or other states with hostile legislatures. Patients need access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more. And right now, lawmakers in Congress are trying to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood as part of their long-term goal to shut down Planned Parenthood and ban abortion nationwide.”
