US Supreme Court backs South Carolina effort to defund Planned Parenthood
Washington: The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way on Thursday for South Carolina to strip Planned Parenthood of funding under the Medicaid health insurance program in a ruling that bolsters efforts by Republican-led states to deprive the reproductive healthcare and abortion provider of public money.
The 6-3 ruling overturned a lower court's decision barring Republican-governed South Carolina from terminating regional affiliate
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic
's participation in the state's Medicaid program because the organization provides abortions.
The court's three liberal justices dissented from the decision.
The case centered on whether recipients of Medicaid, a joint federal and state health insurance program for low-income people, may sue to enforce a requirement under U.S. law that they may obtain medical assistance from any qualified and willing provider.
Since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide, a number of Republican-led states have implemented near-total bans or, like South Carolina, prohibitions after six weeks of pregnancy.
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic operates clinics in the South Carolina cities of Charleston and Columbia, where it serves hundreds of Medicaid patients each year, providing physical examinations, screenings for cancer and diabetes, pregnancy testing, contraception and other services.
The Planned Parenthood affiliate and Medicaid patient Julie Edwards sued in 2018 after Republican Governor Henry McMaster ordered South Carolina officials to end the organization's participation in the state Medicaid program by deeming any abortion provider unqualified to provide family planning services.
The plaintiffs sued South Carolina under an 1871 U.S. law that helps people challenge illegal acts by state officials. They said the Medicaid law protects what they called a "deeply personal right" to choose one's doctor.
The South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom conservative legal group and backed by President Donald Trump's administration, said the disputed Medicaid provision in this case does not meet the "high bar for recognizing private rights."
A federal judge ruled in Planned Parenthood's favor, finding that Medicaid recipients may sue under the 1871 law and that the state's move to defund the organization violated the right of Edwards to freely choose a qualified medical provider.
In 2024, the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also sided with the plaintiffs.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on April 2.
The dispute has reached the Supreme Court three times. The court in 2020 rejected South Carolina's appeal at an earlier stage of the case. In 2023, it ordered a lower court to reconsider South Carolina's arguments in light of a ruling the justices had issued involving the rights of nursing home residents that explained that laws like Medicaid must unambiguously give individuals the right to sue.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
&w=3840&q=100)
First Post
40 minutes ago
- First Post
Melissa Hortman honoured at funeral attended by Biden, Harris after tragic shooting
Hortman was shot to death in a pair of attacks two weeks earlier by a man posing as a police officer that Minnesota's chief federal prosecutor has called an assassination. The shootings also left her husband, Mark, dead and a state senator and his wife seriously wounded read more Attendees take their seats before funeral services for Mark and Melissa Hortman at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, Minn. AP Democratic former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman was honored for her legislative accomplishments and her humanity during a funeral Saturday where former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris joined the over 1,000 mourners. Hortman was shot to death in a pair of attacks two weeks earlier by a man posing as a police officer that Minnesota's chief federal prosecutor has called an assassination. The shootings also left her husband, Mark, dead and a state senator and his wife seriously wounded. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'Melissa Hortman will be remembered as the most consequential speaker in Minnesota history. I get to remember her as a close friend, a mentor, and the most talented legislator I have ever known,' Gov. Tim Walz said in his eulogy. 'For seven years, I have had the privilege of signing her agenda into law. I know millions of Minnesotans get to live their lives better because she and Mark chose public service and politics.' Neither Biden nor Harris spoke, but they said in the front row with the governor. Biden also paid his respects Friday as Hortman, her husband, Mark, and their golden retriever, Gilbert, lay in state in the Minnesota Capitol rotunda in St. Paul. Biden also visited the wounded senator in a hospital. Hortman was the first woman and one of fewer than 20 Minnesotans to lay in state at the Capitol. It was the first time a couple has been accorded the honor, and the first for a dog. Gilbert was seriously wounded in the attack and had to be euthanized. Hortman, who was first elected in 2004, helped pass an expansive agenda of liberal initiatives like free lunches for public school students during the momentous 2023 session as the chamber's speaker, along with expanded protections for abortion and trans rights. With the House split 67-67 between Democrats and Republicans this year, she yielded the gavel to a Republican under a power-sharing deal, took the title speaker emerita, and helped break a budget impasse that threatened to shut down state government. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Walz said Hortman saw her mission as 'to get as much good done for as many people as possible.' And he said her focus on people was what made her so effective. 'She knew how to get her way, no doubt about it," Walz said. 'But she never made anyone feel like they'd gotten rolled at the negotiating table. That wasn't part of it for her. She didn't need someone else to lose to know she'd won.' 'She certainly knew how to get her way. No doubt about that,' Walz said. 'But she never made anyone feel that they'd gotten rolled at a negotiating table. That wasn't part of it for her, or a part of who she was. She didn't need somebody else to lose to win for her.' The governor said the best way to honor the Hortmans would be by following their example. 'Maybe it is this moment where each of us can examine the way we work together, the way we talk about each other, the way we fight for things we care about,' Walz said. 'A moment when each of us can recommit to engaging in politics and life the way Mark and Melissa did – fiercely, enthusiastically, heartily, but without ever losing sight of our common humanity.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Dozens of state legislators who served with Hortman attended. The Rev. Daniel Griffith, pastor and rector of the Basilica, led the service. Other clergy present included Archbishop Bernard Hebda of the Saint Paul and Minneapolis Archdiocese. The man accused of killing the Hortmans at their home in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park on June 14, and wounding Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, at their home in nearby Champlin, made a brief court appearance Friday. He's due back in court Thursday. Vance Boelter, 57, of Green Isle, surrendered near his home the night of June 15 after what authorities called the largest search in Minnesota history. Boelter has not entered a plea. Prosecutors need to secure a grand jury indictment first. His lawyers have declined to comment on the charges, which could carry the federal death penalty. Friends have described Boelter as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views. But prosecutors have declined so far to speculate on a motive. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Time of India
40 minutes ago
- Time of India
Punjab suspends 26 jail officers, staffers for dereliction of duty
Chandigarh: The Punjab govt suspended 26 officers and employees of the jails department for dereliction of duty. Punjab jails minister Laljit Singh Bhullar informed that the action had been taken under Punjab Civil Services (Punishment and Appeal) Rules, 1970. The minister said illegal activities, misbehaviour, indiscipline, absence from duty, and activities like involvement with prisoners would not be tolerated at all. The minister mentioned that Mansa jail superintendent Iqbal Singh Brar, Ludhiana central jail deputy superintendent Maninder Pal Cheema, Ludhiana-based Borstal jail deputy superintendent Anil Bhandari, Ludhiana central jail deputy superintendent Sandeep Brar, Ferozepur central jail assistant superintendent Yadvinder Singh, and warders Harbhupinder Singh and Sikander Singh Goindwal Sahib, Bikramjit Singh and Vijay Pal Singh Amritsar, Jatinder Singh, Ravi, Deepak Rai, Kiranjit Singh, Prithipal Singh and Satnam Singh Kapurthala, Satnam Singh and Mandeep Singh Hoshiarpur, Maninder Pal Singh Ludhiana, Anu Malik, Randhir Singh, Arvind Dev Singh, Balvir Singh and Sukhpreet Singh Mansa, Satnam Singh Nabha, Gagandeep Singh Bathinda, and Anmol Verma Pathankot, were suspended.
Time of India
43 minutes ago
- Time of India
With Supreme Court ruling, another check on Trump's power fades
WASHINGTON : The Supreme Court ruling barring judges from swiftly blocking government actions, even when they may be illegal, is yet another way that checks on executive authority have eroded as President Donald Trump pushes to amass more power. The decision on Friday, by a vote of 6-3, could allow Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship to take effect in some parts of the country -- even though every court that has looked at the directive has ruled it unconstitutional. That means some infants born to immigrants without legal status or foreign visitors without green cards could be denied citizenship-affirming documentation like Social Security numbers. But the diminishing of judicial authority as a potential counterweight to exercises of presidential power carries implications far beyond the issue of citizenship. The Supreme Court is effectively tying the hands of lower-court judges at a time when they are trying to respond to a steady geyser of aggressive executive branch orders and policies. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Jesus' Tomb Is Opened And Scientists Find Something Unbelievable Novelodge Undo The ability of district courts to swiftly block Trump administration actions from being enforced in the first place has acted as a rare effective check on his second-term presidency. But generally, the pace of the judicial process is slow and has struggled to keep up. Actions that took place by the time a court rules them illegal, like shutting down an agency or sending migrants to a foreign prison without due process, can be difficult to unwind. Presidential power historically goes through ebbs and flows, with fundamental implications for the functioning of the system of checks and balances that defines American-style democracy. Live Events But it has generally been on an upward path since the middle of the 20th century. The growth of the administrative state inside the executive branch, and the large standing armies left in place as World War II segued into the Cold War, inaugurated what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. coined the "imperial presidency." Presidential power waned in the 1970s, in the period encompassing the Watergate scandal and the end of the Vietnam War. Courts proved willing to rule against the presidency, as when the Supreme Court forced President Richard Nixon to turn over his Oval Office tapes. Members of both parties worked together to enact laws imposing new or restored limits on the exercise of executive power. But the present era is very different. Presidential power began to grow again in the Reagan era and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And now Trump, rejecting norms of self-restraint, has pushed to eliminate checks on his authority and stamp out pockets of independence within the government while only rarely encountering resistance from a Supreme Court he reshaped and a Congress controlled by a party in his thrall. The decision by the Supreme Court's conservative majority comes as other constraints on Trump's power have also eroded. The administration has steamrolled internal executive branch checks, including firing inspectors general and sidelining the Justice Department 's Office of Legal Counsel, which traditionally set guardrails for proposed policies and executive orders. And Congress, under the control of Trump's fellow Republicans, has done little to defend its constitutional role against his encroachments. This includes unilaterally dismantling agencies Congress had said shall exist as a matter of law, firing civil servants in defiance of statutory limits, and refusing to spend funds that lawmakers had authorized and appropriated. Last week, when Trump unilaterally bombed Iranian nuclear sites without getting prior authorization from Congress or making any claim of an imminent threat, one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, stepped forward to call the move unconstitutional since Congress has the power to declare war. Trump reacted ferociously, declaring that he would back a primary challenger to end Massie's political career, a clear warning shot to any other Republican considering objecting to his actions. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, recently told her constituents that "we are all afraid" of Trump. While the immediate beneficiary of the Supreme Court's ruling is Trump, the decision also promises to free his successors from what has been a growing trend of district court intervention into presidential policymaking. In the citizenship case, the justices stripped district court judges of the authority to issue so-called universal injunctions, a tool that lower courts have used to block government actions they deem most likely illegal from taking effect nationwide as legal challenges to them play out. The frequency of such orders has sharply increased in recent years, bedeviling presidents of both parties. Going forward, the justices said, lower courts may only grant injunctive relief to the specific plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits. That means the Trump administration may start enforcing the president's birthright citizenship order in the 28 states that have not challenged it, unless individual parents have the wherewithal and gumption to bring their own lawsuits. The full scope of the ruling remains to be seen given that it will not take effect for 30 days. It is possible that plaintiffs and lower-court judges will expand the use of class-action lawsuits as a different path to orders with a nationwide effect. Such an option, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion, would be proper so long as they obey procedural limits for class-action cases. Still, in concurring opinions, two other key members of the conservative bloc, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, warned lower-court judges not to lower standards for using alternative means to issue sweeping orders in an effort to circumvent the ruling. Alito wrote that "district courts should not view today's decision as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors" of legal rules. Thomas added that if judges do not "carefully heed this court's guidance" and act within limits, "this court will continue to be 'duty bound' to intervene." In a rare move that signaled unusually intense opposition, Justice Sonia Sotomayor read aloud a summary of her dissenting opinion from the bench Friday. Calling the ruling a grave attack on the American system of law, she said it endangered constitutional rights for everyone who is not a party to lawsuits defending them. "Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship," she wrote. "Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief." Sotomayor also said the administration did not ask to entirely halt the multiple injunctions against its order because it knew the directive was patently illegal, and accused the majority of playing along with that open gamesmanship. She, like the other two justices who joined her dissent, is a Democratic appointee. All six of the justices who voted to end universal injunctions were Republican appointees, including three Trump installed on the bench in his first term. The same supermajority has ruled in ways that have enhanced his power in other avenues. Last year, the bloc granted Trump presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts as president. The ruling, by Chief Justice John Roberts, asserted that presidents have absolute immunity for anything they do with the Justice Department and their supervision of federal law enforcement power. Emboldened, Trump this year has built on his approach from his first term, when he informally pressured prosecutors to investigate his political foes. He has issued formal orders to scrutinize specific people he does not like, shattering the post-Watergate norm of a Justice Department case independent from White House political control. The supermajority also has blessed Trump's gambit in firing Democratic members of independent agency commissions before their terms were up. The conservative justices have made clear that they are prepared to overturn a long-standing precedent allowing Congress to establish specialized agencies to be run by panels whose members cannot be arbitrarily fired by presidents. In a separate concurrence, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offered a realpolitik take. The majority's exegesis of what powers Congress understood itself to be granting lower courts when it created them in 1789 was a smokescreen of mind-numbing "legalese," she wrote, obscuring the question of whether a court can order the executive branch to follow the law. "In a constitutional republic such as ours, a federal court has the power to order the executive to follow the law -- and it must," she wrote before striking a cautionary note. "Everyone, from the president on down, is bound by law," she added. "By duty and nature, federal courts say what the law is (if there is a genuine dispute), and require those who are subject to the law to conform their behavior to what the law requires. This is the essence of the rule of law." But Barrett accused her of forgetting that courts, too, must obey legal limits. "Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary," Barrett wrote. "No one disputes that the executive has a duty to follow the law. But the judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation -- in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the judiciary from doing so." This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
