Medicaid is a joint federal-state program that offers health insurance coverage to low-income Americans.
Planned Parenthood is a major provider of abortion services. It also offers other services such as birth control, testing for pregnancy and venereal diseases, and sex education.
The executive fiat directed state health officials to “deem abortion clinics unqualified to provide family planning services.” The order also made officials terminate clinics’ enrollment agreements and deny their enrollment applications in the future.
It followed a state law that forbids the use of state funds to pay for abortions.
The issue here is whether “the Medicaid Act’s any-qualified-provider provision unambiguously confers a private right upon a Medicaid beneficiary to choose a specific provider,” according to the petition.
Federal courts of appeals disagree on how the provision should be interpreted. In March 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit heard the South Carolina case and ruled against the state.
The petition said Planned Parenthood and Julie Edwards, one of the organization’s Medicaid clients, filed a lawsuit in federal district court over South Carolina’s policy.
They argued the state had violated clients’ right to select a “qualified provider” under federal law.
South Carolina countered by saying that the any-qualified-provider provision “does not unambiguously create a federal right enforceable by providers and individual patients under 42 U.S.C. [Section] 1983,” a federal law that allows individuals to sue the government for civil rights violations.
The district court affirmed Edwards’s right to sue South Carolina over the state’s vow not to cover medical treatment that Planned Parenthood might provide to her. The court also granted Edwards’s request for a preliminary injunction against the state and did not rule on whether Planned Parenthood was also entitled to the same kind of order.
The Fourth Circuit upheld the ruling, finding that Congress intended “to create an individual right enforceable under [Section] 1983 in the free-choice-of-provider provision” and that the provision “bars states from excluding providers for reasons unrelated to professional competency.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is representing the petitioner, state official Eunice Medina.
ADF attorney John Bursch told The Epoch Times that “taxpayer dollars should never be used to fund facilities that make a profit off abortion.”
“State officials should be free to determine that Planned Parenthood and other entities” that provide abortion do not qualify for Medicaid funding, he said.
“Congress did not create a right for Medicaid recipients to drag states into federal court to challenge those decisions. Nor did Congress intend for federal courts to second guess states’ decisions about which providers are qualified to receive Medicaid funding.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Planned Parenthood’s attorney, Nicole Saharsky of Washington firm Mayer Brown, for comment. No reply was received by publication time.
