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Home Front: Culture Wars

SCOTUS Gives Planned Parenthood A Constitutional Right To Public Funds

2018-12-11

[Red State] A little earlier today, the Supreme Court declined to hear challenges to two lower court rulings that said states could not refuse to recognize Planned Parenthood as a Medicaid provider. Kansas and Louisiana passed laws in 2014, based on the celebrated undercover videos of James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas that showed Planned Parenthood officials sizing up the value of aborted babies with all the conscience of the manager of a mob-owned New Jersey auto chop-shop.

Conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito voted in favor of taking up the challenge, but fellow conservatives John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh voted against, depriving their colleagues of the four votes required to review a case.

Given the criminality involved and the basic absence of medical care available at Planned Parenthood facilities (no, they actually don’t do mammograms and most of their services are no more sophisticated that what you get at a drug store and do yourself at home...other than killing babies, of course) this should have been an open-and-shut issue of what businesses state governments decide to give their money to.

Posted by:Besoeker

#5 Glad to be of help. It has been speculated that both Roberts and Kavanaugh voted not to hear the appeal (for now), because they feared that it would be misrepresented as an abortion case, or a Planned Parenthood case, and so cause more discord, especially considering Kavanaugh's confirmation fight. Clarence Thomas wrote a serious dissent, in which he said resolving splits among the circuits is the Supreme Court's responsibility (he's right), and the only reason the liberals, Roberts and Kavanaugh declined to hear the case is because it has the name "Planned Parenthood" in it somewhere. Legal experts seem to think they will wait for a similar case and hear it, when it is less likely to lead to more hate and discontent. It also sounds like whenever the case (or a similar case) is heard, the Court will rule that Congress did not intend for citizens to have the right to sue over every administrative decision made by Medicaid managers. In the meantime, it seems unlikely Congress will look at this and tighten the statute, since the houses of Congress are now split. This is really kind of an unimportant non-issue which will get settled in a year or two.

Posted by: JC 2018-12-11 23:01

#4 JC your description, in 177 words, is the best synopsis of this non-ruling I've heard in the voluminous over-bloviations from both sides.

Thank you

Posted by: Mullah Richard 2018-12-11 10:29

#3 Thx for the clarification JC.

Posted by: Besoeker 2018-12-11 10:05

#2 Sorry, but that headline from Red State is terribly misleading. What the court decided was not to hear appeals from conflicting appellate court decisions, which said in several circuits that private parties could sue states over changes in Medicaid coverage or providers, and in another circuit, which said they could not sue. All the Supreme Court did was to not rule (for now) on the issue of who could sue. This allows lawsuits in several Circuits to go forward in a district court which will eventually decide whether states can defund providers. Nothing gives Planned Parenthood any 'rights'. This was a decision not to allow hearings on whether Federal law allows such lawsuits from private persons, if for instance, their preferred doctor is removed from Medicaid plans, or if a state decides to pay more or less for any given medical procedure or service. The 2 states which were the subject of the lawsuits did defund Planned Parenthood, but the case the Supreme Court passed on was about who could sue, not on the issue of PP.

Posted by: JC 2018-12-11 09:27

#1 It can't be a right.

It could only be an entitlement.

Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2018-12-11 07:54

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