The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday paved the way for states to block Medicaid funding from going to abortion giant Planned Parenthood.
The high court’s decision, which comes after years of legal wrangling, affirms the authority of individual states to determine how taxpayer dollars are allocated — and who gets excluded.
In a landmark 6-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic that individual Medicaid recipients do not have the right to sue states under federal law for excluding abortion providers like Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs.
The Court’s decision, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, reversed a ruling from the Fourth Circuit and solidified the state of South Carolina’s authority to remove Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid network—without fear of federal lawsuits from individual patients or abortion activists cloaking themselves in civil rights statutes.
This case arose after South Carolina decided in 2018 to terminate Planned Parenthood’s participation in its Medicaid program, citing a state law that bans the use of public funds for abortion.
Abortion advocates predictably sued under 42 U.S.C. §1983, claiming the state violated a supposed “right” under the Medicaid Act’s “any-qualified-provider” provision.
Justice Gorsuch clarified that this provision does not confer individually enforceable federal rights. It is a directive to states, not a free pass for left-wing groups to weaponize the courts every time a state takes a stand for life.
“The 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.
He continued, “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.”
Read the ruling below:
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