The U.S. Supreme Court
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will review South Carolina’s effort to disqualify Planned Parenthood from providing non-abortion services to Medicaid patients.
Among those services are providing cancer screening, birth control and physical exams.
The court will restrict itself to a single question in the case: The justices agreed to take up the question of whether “the Medicaid Act’s any-qualified provider provision unambiguously confers a private right upon a Medicaid beneficiary to choose a specific provider.”
In 2018, prior to the Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade, South Carolina’s governor broadly deemed abortion clinics “unqualified” to provide family planning services under Medicaid.
Planned Parenthood promptly sued, arguing that the state violated federal law by excluding the organization as a qualified Medicaid provider for non-abortion services. It also said that the state had violated the Medicaid provision that guarantees patients’ rights to the “qualified provider of their choosing.”
The state responded that the Medicaid law does not create such an unconditional right.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, relying on Supreme Court precedent, sided with Planned Parenthood. Four other federal appeals courts issued similar rulings, but two other appeals courts, the conservative Fifth and the Eighth Circuits, ruled the other way. That created a split in the circuit courts of appeal, that the justices will now resolve.
Even at the time of the lawsuit, abortions were not covered under Medicaid except in rare circumstances, according to Planned Parenthood. Moreover, since the suit was filed, South Carolina has passed a so-called “heartbeat law” banning most abortions.
