The Supreme Court on Wednesday debated one state’s effort to keep public money away from Planned Parenthood and the rights of individual patients to sue when that effort interferes with their personal medical choices.
In Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the court is considering whether Medicaid recipients in South Carolina have a legal right to challenge a state order prohibiting Medicaid funds from going to abortion providers. Before the order went into effect, patients were covered when they went to Planned Parenthood for non-abortion services, like cancer screenings and blood pressure checks.
During oral arguments on Wednesday, the court debated whether the federal Medicaid Act gives individual Medicaid recipients the right to try to force changes to a state’s list of qualified providers through legal action.
At least five of the nine justices seemed skeptical of South Carolina’s claim that there’s no individual right to bring a lawsuit under the federal law.
“Justices, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Neil M. Gorsuch, pressed South Carolina’s lawyer about the availability of meaningful recourse for patients other than litigation if a Medicaid recipient is denied access to their chosen medical provider,” according to The Washington Post.
Planned Parenthood case background
The Supreme Court case originated in 2018, when South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster ordered state agencies to stop sending public funds to “any physician or professional medical practice ‘affiliated with an abortion clinic,‘” according to The Washington Post.
The order expanded an existing prohibition against using Medicaid funds for abortion and aimed to stop abortion providers from accessing any amount of public money.
“The payment of taxpayer funds to abortion clinics, for any purpose, results in the subsidy of abortion and the denial of the right to life,” McMaster wrote in the order.
As a result of the order, Medicaid recipients are no longer covered if they use Planned Parenthood clinics for cancer screenings, birth control prescriptions and other types of non-abortion medical services.
Planned Parenthood patient Julie Edwards objected to the change and, along with Planned Parenthood, sued to block it.
Their lawsuit argues that South Carolina is violating the part of the federal Medicaid Act that deals with a patient’s right to seek treatment from any “qualified” provider, according to SCOTUSblog.
Edwards and Planned Parenthood believe the Medicaid Act created an individual right to use the medical providers you want to use. South Carolina officials, on the other hand, say the law deals with the relationship between states and the federal government, not with the rights of individual Medicaid recipients.
Edwards and Planned Parenthood won at the district and circuit court levels, where judges agreed that South Carolina’s order is violating patients’ rights.
“South Carolina — represented by the conservative advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom — appealed to the Supreme Court last June, asking the justices to decide whether Edwards and Planned Parenthood have a legal right to sue to enforce the Medicaid Act. The justices agreed in December to weigh in," SCOTUSblog reported.
Supreme Court ruling on Planned Parenthood
The Planned Parenthood case is the latest in a string of abortion-related cases to reach the Supreme Court in the past three years.
Since the justices returned control over abortion restrictions to states in June 2022, they’ve debated access to abortion pills and whether or not state-level abortion bans violate federal rules on emergency care.
The court unanimously protected access to mifepristone in the first of those two cases and determined the second one was “improvidently granted.”
One of the Supreme Court briefs filed in favor of South Carolina in the Planned Parenthood case said that siding with state officials would fit the spirit of the 2022 ruling by making it clear that states can regulate abortion — and oversee abortion providers — without interference from the federal government or individual Medicaid recipients, SCOTUSblog reported.