The Supreme Court effectively ruled on Thursday morning that South Carolina can exclude Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid programs because the national health care organization also offers abortion care. The decision will deny hundreds of thousands of low-income patients their only health care option and paves a path for other states to do the same.
The 6-3 ruling, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, reversed a Fourth Circuit court decision and remanded the case. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
“Medicaid offers States ‘a bargain.’ In return for federal funds, States agree ‘to spend them in accordance with congressionally imposed conditions,’” Gorsuch wrote in the opinion.
“Should a State fail to comply substantially with those conditions, the Secretary of Health and Human Services can withhold some or all of its federal Medicaid funding,” Gorsuch continued. “This case poses the question whether, in addition to that remedy, individual Medicaid beneficiaries may sue state officials for failing to comply with one funding condition...”
It’s the high court’s first ruling related to abortion and reproductive rights since the return of President Donald Trump, whose administration in February joined the case alongside South Carolina. The decision is a win for the Trump administration, which has made it a priority to actualize the GOP’s long-held goal of defunding Planned Parenthood.
