A coalition of California and other liberals sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, a provision that planned parenting and other large nonprofit abortion providers in the Big Beautiful Act that could not get Medicaid funds for many unrelated health care services.
The measure threatens clinics nationwide that operate on federal funds. California. General Rob Bonta, who is helping lead the lawsuit, called it a “brutal, backdoor abortion ban” that violated the law in many ways.
The national challenge was a day when Planned Parenthood won its own major victory in the lawsuit against Boston measures, with a federal judge placing a preliminary injunction preventing the injunction from taking effect nationwide against the program’s parent branches.
Federal law has banned the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortions, but new “contribution rules” have developed further in the bill passed by Congressional Republicans earlier this month. It also bans nonprofit abortion providers from generating $800,000 or more of their annual Medicaid income in 2023, and cannot access any such funding for next year, including services not associated with abortion, such as annual checkups, cancer screening, birth control and testing for sexually transmitted infections.
Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice believe that the measure “prevents federal subsidies from large-scale abortions” and that Congress under the Constitution “is free to refuse taxpayer funds to entities that provide abortion”, and that the family planning position should not make it impossible for Congress to hold.
In announcing the lawsuits in the states on Monday, Bonta’s office echoed the program’s parent officials and asserted that the provision was specifically targeting the program’s parent clinics and their associate clinics – calling it “a direct attack on health care for millions of low-income Americans, an impact on the health care of millions of low-income Americans, on women, LGBTQ+ individuals, lgbtq+ individuals and color communities.”
The measure threatens $300 million in federal funding from clinics in California, where Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider and “threatening the stability of family planning,” said the Bonta office. The 114 clinics across the state serve 700,000 patients a year, many of whom use Medi Cal, the state’s version of Medicaus.
During a virtual press conference on Monday, Bonta noted that federal funds have no longer covered abortion. He said the new rule is “a punishment for the constitutional protection of family planning to advocate for abortion” and “a direct attack on millions of people relying on Medicaid to obtain basic health care.”
“The Trump administration and Congress are actually covering up basic life-saving care, such as cancer screening and sexually transmitted infection testing, simply because family planning is published to support reproductive rights,” Bonta said. ” Hypocrisy is really hard to ignore. A party that claims to be a defender of freedom of speech only seems to care about it when it is aligned with its own agenda.”
“Rest assured, California will continue to lead with a reproductive freedom state and will continue to defend health care as a human right,” Bonta added.
In the lawsuit, states consider the measure illegal ambiguity and violates Congress’ spending power by picking out negative treatment of Planned Parenthood, which will harm people’s health and increase the cost of Medicaid by more than $50 million over the next decade.
In the lawsuit, Family Planning also argued that the measure deliberately punished its singles and its branches, which violated its constitutional rights, including freedom of speech.
“She is not banning the federal government from abortion regulation, and not directing the federal government to fund elections for abortion or any other health care services that would otherwise not qualify for Medicaid,” U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote on Monday when approving the family planning requirement.
Talwani, who was appointed by Obama, wrote that she also did not ask the federal government to “spend money to Medicaid or any other funding”.
Instead, Talwani wrote that her order prevented the Trump administration from targeting specific entities – members of the Planned Parenthood Federation – to reimbursement outside of reimbursement under Medicaid, as they likely proved that “this targeted exclusion violates the U.S. Constitution. ”
White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement to the Times that the “big and beautiful bill” was passed legally by two parliaments in the legislative branch and signed into law by the CEO, and that the order Talwani granted the ban was “not only ridiculous, but also illogical and incorrect.”
“It is such an order that emphasizes the courage of the lower courts and the chaos within the judiciary. We look forward to the final victory of this issue,” Fields said.
The White House did not immediately respond to other requests for comment regarding state lawsuits.
Jodi Hicks, president and CEO of the California Family Planning branch, joined Bonta at a press conference. She welcomes the lawsuits in the states, saying: “This serious attack requires a multi-pronged response in a short-term and long-term strategic manner.”
Hicks said California is helping to fight back, given the state’s huge stake.
“California is the most affected state in the country due to the number of patients we have,” she said. “It speaks to our values. This contribution rule is definitely [an] Attack on Value – Most severely against California. ”
Bonta leads the lawsuit with lawyers in Connecticut and New York. Joining them are Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Worston and Worston of Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Jersey, New Jersey, New Jersey, New Mexico, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Oregon, Oregon, Fremont, Washington, Washington and Worston.
Bonta noted that the lawsuit was No. 36 his office filed against the Trump administration in the past 27 weeks.
