The government’s Medicaid program, which is funded by the United States Supreme Court, has been withdrawn from South Carolina’s ability to fund the nonprofit healthcare provider Planned Parenthood.
The three liberal justices on the nine-member court dissented, with the three on Thursday’s ruling expressing ideological disagreement.
A lower court’s decision was overturned, preventing Republican-controlled South Carolina from preventing a regional branch of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic from utilizing the state’s Medicaid program.
Planned Parenthood has drawn opposition from South Carolina’s Republican leadership because it allows abortions.
The Supreme Court’s decision supports Republican-led states’ efforts to defraud the provider of public funds for reproductive healthcare.
The issue was whether Medicaid recipients could bring legal action to quashed US law’s requirement that they could seek medical care from any qualified and willing provider. The federal and state governments jointly administer Medicaid, which is intended to provide low-income people with healthcare.
Numerous Republican-led states have implemented nearly total bans on the procedure since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Some states, like South Carolina, forbid pregnancy terminations after six weeks.
In Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic provides physical exams, cancer and diabetes screenings, pregnancy testing, contraception, and other services to hundreds of Medicaid patients annually.
In 2018, the state was sued by the Planned Parenthood affiliate and a Medicaid patient named Julie Edwards. Republican Governor Henry McMaster had issued a directive to stop Planned Parenthood’s participation in the state Medicaid program a year earlier, stating that any abortion provider deemed unqualified to offer family planning services.
South Carolina was sued by the plaintiffs in violation of a law from 1871 that allows citizens to challenge state officials’ illegal behavior. According to them, the Medicaid law protects what they called the “deeply personal right” to pick a doctor.
The disputed Medicaid provision in this case does not meet the “high bar for recognising private rights,” according to the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, which is supported by the Alliance Defending Freedom conservative legal group.
Prior to this decision, a federal judge upheld Planned Parenthood’s claim that Medicaid recipients had the right to file lawsuits under the 1871 law and that the state’s decision to defund the organization violated Edwards’ right to pick a qualified medical provider at his discretion.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys were also sided with by the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in Richmond, Virginia, in 2024.
On April 2, the Supreme Court heard the case’s arguments.
The Supreme Court has three times heard the case. At a later time in the case, the court in 2020 rejected South Carolina’s appeal. In response to a ruling the justices made regarding the rights of residents of nursing homes, it ordered a lower court to consider South Carolina’s arguments in 2023.
Source: Aljazeera
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