The Supreme Court ruled against Planned Parenthood Thursday, handing a significant win to the pro-life movement.
In the case Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the justices ruled, 6-3, that South Carolina can legally block Planned Parenthood facilities from receiving Medicaid funding.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined. Thomas also filed a concurring opinion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissenting opinion, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined her opinion.
In order to receive federal funding through Medicaid, states must submit to the secretary of Health and Human Services a “plan for medical assistance.” These plans must satisfy more than 80 separate conditions Congress set out in the law. The federal government has provided, on average, about 57% of the funds to implement Medicaid, with states making up the rest.
The law requires states to ensure that “any individual eligible for medical assistance … may obtain” it “from any [provider] qualified to perform the services … who undertakes to provide it.”
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic operates two clinics in South Carolina, one in each of the state’s two most populous cities. Citing a state law prohibiting the use of funding for abortion, South Carolina announced in July 2018 that Planned Parenthood could no longer participate in the state’s Medicaid program. The state also took actions to ensure that a “variety of other nongovernmental entities and governmental agencies” would continue to provide “access to necessary medical care and important women’s health and family planning services.” The state has 140 federally qualified health clinics and pregnancy centers, for instance.
Justice Gorsuch ruled that Congress did not create a right to allow individuals to sue in cases like this.
“Congress knows how to give a grantee clear and unambiguous notice that, if it accepts federal funds, it may face private suits asserting an individual right to choose a medical provider,” he wrote. Congress did not do this.
The law “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,’” but the law at hand “is not such a statute,” Gorsuch ruled.
Civil Rights Act Arguments
Justice Jackson wrote that the Civil Rights Act of 1871, which permits any citizen to obtain redress in federal court for “the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws” of the U.S., should bar South Carolina from defunding Planned Parenthood. She wrote that allowing the defunding enables South Carolina to “evade liability for violating the rights of its Medicaid recipients to choose their own doctors.”
Justice Thomas wrote that, while few courts adjudicated cases involving that particular provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 in the first 50 years since it was passed, courts have faced a “deluge” of such cases since 1961.
“Notwithstanding its origins as an ‘extraordinary remedy passed during Reconstruction to protect basic civil rights against oppressive state action,’ [secion 1983] now serves as ‘simply one more weapon in the litigant’s arsenal,’” he noted. “The ‘scant resemblance’ between [section 1983] today and [section 1983] as it was traditionally understood creates good reason to doubt our modern understanding.”
He called for “a more fundamental reexamination” of how the Supreme Court interprets the provision.
Defunding Planned Parenthood
In 2018, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, signed an executive action directing the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to remove Planned Parenthood from South Carolina’s Medicaid provider list.
The Republican governor argued that any funding to Planned Parenthood, even if not directly used for abortions, indirectly funds abortions and undermines the state’s commitment to protect the unborn.
“This case is about protecting the sanctity of life and preserving South Carolina’s right to govern itself in a way that reflects the values of its people,” McMaster said in a statement in February.
“South Carolina has made it clear that we value the right to life,” McMaster continued. “Therefore, taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize abortion providers who are in direct opposition to their beliefs. Just as I was in 2018, I am confident in our authority to terminate funding for Planned Parenthood, and I trust that the U.S. Supreme Court will agree.”
There are two Planned Parenthood clinics in South Carolina, one in Columbia and another in Charleston.
“South Carolina is facing an ever-worsening reproductive health care crisis,” Vicki Ringer, South Carolina director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said in a statement in February.
“In just under two years, we’ve already heard countless stories of distress, bodily harm, persecution, and even death, from patients whose care was delayed or denied due to these bans,” Ringer said. “If anti-abortion lawmakers are allowed to act unchecked, they will revoke our access to this care altogether—with no exceptions. We must continue to take them to task—in the legislature, in the courts, and in our communities.”
Alliance Defending Freedom, a large Christian legal organization, represented South Carolina in the case and argued before the Supreme Court in April that states have a right to determine which entities in that state receive Medicaid funds.
The lawyer representing Planned Parenthood argued that patients should be allowed to sue when their chosen health care provider is denied to them.
