Supreme Court to hear case over South Carolina’s effort to cut Planned Parenthood funding
By John Fritze, CNN
(CNN) — The Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to wade into a years-old legal battle over South Carolina’s failed bid to cut Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood.
At issue is an executive order from South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, that he signed in 2018 that pulled funding for Planned Parenthood. The organization and one of its patients sued, asserting the order violated a federal law that allows Medicaid recipients to seek care from any qualified provider.
The appeal puts abortion back on the docket two years after the court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments in the South Carolina case at the same time it announced it will weigh a controversial ban on TikTok approved by Congress earlier this year.
South Carolina has repeatedly lost in its effort to defend the order in court, and the Supreme Court declined to take the dispute up four years ago.
But last year, the justices sent the matter back to an appeals court for further review in light of a similar case involving a nursing home patient whose wife sued over what she said was inadequate care. While the court sided with the patient in that case, South Carolina believes the ruling changed the legal landscape in a way that helped their arguments.
But a three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with that take and sided with the patient and Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of health care, including contraception, cancer screenings and other services. The organization also provides abortions, but Medicaid funding does not cover the procedure except in cases of rape, incest or when a woman’s life is at risk.
The state’s Department of Health and Human Services was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal advocacy group based in Arizona.
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