Planned Parenthood patient wins Medicaid defunding fight in 4th Circ

(Reuters) - South Carolina cannot cancel a Planned Parenthood affiliate’s status as a Medicaid-approved healthcare provider solely because the organization also offers abortions, a federal appeals court held Tuesday.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals insisted the case “is not about abortion,” but rather about a Medicaid patient’s right to choose any qualified provider – a right that was added to the federal statute 55 years ago.

“To allow the State to disqualify Planned Parenthood would nullify Congress’s manifest intent to provide our less fortunate citizens the opportunity to select a medical provider of their choice, an opportunity that the most fortunate routinely enjoy,” Circuit Judge Harvie Wilkinson wrote for the court.

The panel also stood by an earlier ruling that individual patients can bring a civil-rights action to enforce the choice-of-provider rule. Seven circuits have considered that question, and just two have found that patients have no private right to sue, Wilkinson noted.

"The Fourth Circuit has confirmed what we already knew: Every person should be able to choose a provider they know and trust, no matter their income or insurance status,” Jennie Black, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic said in an email Tuesday.

The state’s appellate lawyers and the governor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and patient Julie Edwards filed the suit in July 2018 - two weeks after South Carolina’s Republican governor ordered the state health department to cancel its Medicaid program agreement with any healthcare provider that offered abortions.

Gov. Henry McMaster’s executive order deemed those providers “unqualified” to serve the state’s Medicaid patients because the money would indirectly subsidize abortions the system did not cover directly.

U.S. District Judge Mary Lewis in Columbia, South Carolina, quickly blocked the state from defunding Planned Parenthood while the litigation was pending. The 4th Circuit affirmed the preliminary injunction in 2019, based on Edwards’ rights, and the Supreme Court refused to review it.

The case then went back to Lewis, who issued a permanent injunction in December 2020.

South Carolina appealed again, urging the court to overturn its 2019 ruling that Edwards could sue to enforce the choice-of-provider rule. The en banc 5th Circuit had rejected that same argument in November 2020, the state noted.

The 4th Circuit, however, declined to “destabilize the law of our circuit” by “placing it at the sufferance of any circuit court anywhere that took a contrary step.”

The case is Planned Parenthood South Atlantic et al v. Robert Kerr, Director, South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services

For Planned Parenthood and Julie Edwards: Nicole Saharsky and Avi Kupfer of Mayer Brown; Alice Clapman and Carrie Flaxman of Planned Parenthood Federation of America; M. Malissa Burnette and Kathleen McDaniel of Burnette, Shutt & McDaniel

For South Carolina DHHS: John Bursch of Alliance Defending Freedom; Kelly Jolley and Ariail Kirk of Jolley Law Group

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