WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court dealt a setback Tuesday to the campaign of abortion opponents to “defund” Planned Parenthood.
Without comment, the justices turned away Indiana’s defense of a 2011 law that would ban all Medicaid funds to an organization such as Planned Parenthood whose work includes performing abortions.
The high court let stand decisions by a federal judge in Indiana and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago that blocked the measure from taking effect. The “defunding law excludes Planned Parenthood from Medicaid for a reason unrelated to its fitness to provide medical services, violating its patients’ statutory right to obtain medical care from the qualified provider of their choice,” Judge Diane Sykes said last year for the 7th Circuit Court.
President Barack Obama’s administration had joined the case on the side of Planned Parenthood and argued that the Medicaid law gives eligible low-income patients a right to obtain health care from any qualified provider. This is known as the free-choice-of-provider rule.
More than 9,300 Medicaid patients in Indiana go to Planned Parenthood clinics for routine medical exams, cancer screening and birth control, the lower court said. The organization was forced to stop seeing Medicaid patients for a little more than a month between the time the law was signed and a district court ruling saying it couldn’t be enforced.
“While the state has been trying to score political points and wasting taxpayer dollars, we’ve been standing up for the Hoosiers who count on us every day. We look forward to the day the preliminary injunction in this case becomes permanent,” Betty Cockrum, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Indiana, said in a statement.
Gov. Mike Pence, an opponent of Planned Parenthood during his time in Congress, said he will decide what to do after viewing his legal options.
“We’re disappointed in the court’s decision,” Pence said Tuesday. “I continue to believe and feel strongly that taxpayers should not be required to support the largest abortion provider in America.”
At issue in the case was how far states can go to prevent indirect subsidies for abortion. Congress forbids the spending of federal funds to pay for elective abortions. Indiana has a similar provision in state law.
Two years ago, Indiana lawmakers voted to go further and forbid the spending of any Medicaid money - federal or state - through “any entity” whose facilities perform abortions. Hospitals and state-licensed surgical clinics were exempted. But Planned Parenthood went to federal court and sued on behalf of a doctor, a nurse and two patients.
Arizona’s Legislature passed a similar measure, but it too has been blocked by a federal judge.
Indiana’s attorney general appealed to the Supreme Court and urged the justices to review the case and revive the state’s law.
Ken Falk, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, said Indiana will likely stop defending the law after the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
“I assume at this point the state will give up in its claim that that portion of the statute is valid under the Social Security Act,” Falk said.
The case now returns to U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt, who granted the initial preliminary injunction to temporarily block the law, precipitating the state’s appeals. Pratt, who was appointed in2010 by Obama, will decide whether to make the injunction permanent.
The Family and Social Services Administration - the agency tasked with enforcing the law - declined comment.
“My office always contended this is ultimately a dispute between the state and federal government, not between a private medical provider and the state,” Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said in a statement. Zoeller’s office handled the state’s appeal.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court also ruled Tuesday that state prison inmates who have a strong claim of innocence may be allowed more time than normal to file challenges to their convictions in federal court.
In a 5-4 decision, the court said a 1996 law intended to speed appeals through the federal system should not prevent a prisoner with convincing evidence that he is innocent from making his case in court, even when he has missed the law’s deadline for raising the claim.
A second case, also decided by a 5-4 vote, said inmates on death row must have a chance in the appeals process to argue that their trial lawyers let them down.
Information for this article was contributed by David G. Savage of the Tribune Washington Bureau and by Charles Wilson and staff members of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 05/29/2013