The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that South Carolina is allowed to ban Medicaid funds from going to Planned Parenthood.
Justices voted 6-3 to reverse the Fourth Circuit’s ruling that an individual Medicaid user could bring a federal civil rights lawsuit over Planned Parenthood being excluded from Medicaid in South Carolina.
Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the court’s opinion, saying that Medicaid law does not clearly give patients the right to sue. He noted that states have the authority to decide which health care providers are “qualified” and can participate in Medicaid — for example, doctors who have committed felonies may be excluded. Planned Parenthood can challenge its exclusion from Medicaid through South Carolina’s administrative process, Gorsuch said.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson penned a dissent that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
“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 wrote.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, previously argued that “taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize abortion providers who are in direct opposition to their beliefs.”
South Carolina cited its own state law prohibiting the use of taxpayer dollars for abortion. Federal law also prohibits Medicaid funds from paying for most but not all abortions — the funds are permitted in the cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is in danger.
Planned Parenthood has two clinics in South Carolina.
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