SCOTUS Ruling Is Devastating Hit to Planned Parenthood

Early reaction to Thursday's Supreme Court ruling that went against Planned Parenthood suggests that the 6-3 decision puts the organization's very survival at stake. "Shutting the provider out of Medicaid networks could effectively defund it—a longtime priority of conservative politicians," writes Tina Reed at Axios. Details:

• The decision, stemming from a case brought in South Carolina, paves the way for other states to exclude Planned Parenthood clinics from their Medicaid programs, per the Wall Street Journal.
• The case wasn't explicitly about abortion, given that federal law already prohibits states from using Medicaid funds to pay for them. The New York Times has the details: A patient in South Carolina who was seeking contraception (Planned Parenthood provides a host of services beyond abortion) sued the state over the governor's order to deny Medicaid funding to the organization. "The litigation that followed was convoluted and circuitous, focusing largely on whether Medicaid's provision created a right that individuals could enforce by filing lawsuits," writes Adam Liptak. The court's majority opinion, by Neil Gorsuch, ruled that it did not.

• The ruling "closes off Planned Parenthood's primary court path to keeping Medicaid funding in place: patient lawsuits," per the AP. A CNN analysis notes that "though the legal issue at the center of the case was technically not about abortion, the court's decision threatens funding for an organization that is a leading provider of reproductive healthcare."
• The court's three liberal justices dissented. Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision "will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them," per the Journal. "And, more concretely, it will strip those South Carolinians—and countless other Medicaid recipients around the country—of a deeply personal freedom: the ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable."