In a landmark victory for pro-life Christians, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that each state has the authority to remove Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs, a decision that reverses an earlier ruling against the state of South Carolina, which had individually pushed to defund Planned Parenthood within its borders.
For context, on June 26, 2025, the Supreme Court determined that South Carolina and other states have the right to determine whether Planned Parenthood should be included in a Medicaid program. The decision was made in response to a lawsuit from Julie Edwards, who sued the state of South Carolina after she had lost Medicaid coverage for Planned Parenthood clinic visits.
Representing the majority, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the provisions in the Medicaid Act that guarantee access to certain providers look “nothing like” the language that has been used to carry similar lawsuits forward, adding, “Doubtless, this language speaks to what a State must do to participate in Medicaid, and a State that fails to fulfill its duty might lose federal funding.”
In addition, the conservative justice said that the provision in the Medicaid Act “seeks to benefit both providers and patients,” clarifying that the provision does not include “unambiguous ‘rights-creating language’” that would provide the grounds for a lawsuit like the one Edwards filed against South Carolina.
However, according to press accounts, the three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, all dissented from the court’s ruling, with Justice Jackson saying that with the ruling, “the project of stymying one of the country’s great civil rights laws continues.”
Continuing, Justice Jackson, a Biden appointee, said that her fellow justices who supported the decision had adopted “a narrow and ahistorical reading” of the Medicaid statute, adding, “Today’s decision is likely to result in tangible harm to real people. It will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them.”
In response to the decision, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, celebrated, emphasizing the long road that had to be taken to reach the ruling. He said, “Seven years ago, we took a stand to protect the sanctity of life and defend South Carolina’s authority and values — and today, we are finally victorious.”
In contrast, Paige Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, issued a statement calling the decision a “grave injustice,” adding that it “strikes at the very bedrock of American freedom and promises to send South Carolina deeper into a health care crisis.”
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