A judge has ruled to temporarily freeze President Donald Trump’s megabill provision that will strip Planned Parenthood of federal Medicaid funding.
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani issued the administration a temporary restraining order Monday, freezing the year-long federal funding cuts to Planned Parenthood from Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” while a lawsuit filed by the group plays out in court.
Planned Parenthood filed the lawsuit against the Trump administration hours earlier, claiming that the Defund Provision in Trump’s megabill was “unconstitutional” and simply meant to “punish them for lawful activity, namely advocating for and providing legal abortion.”
The restraining order will remain in effect for fourteen days.
The suit called the bill’s provision a “backdoor abortion ban,” saying that it specifically applied to Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortions, despite them also being “non-profits that primarily provide family planning services, and received more than $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in fiscal year 2023.”
“There is no legitimate justification for the statute; rather, the true design of the Defund Provision is simply to express disapproval of, attack, and punish Planned Parenthood, which plays a particularly prominent role in the public debate over abortion and is the only nationwide abortion provider,” the suit read.
Medicaid is notably unable to generally cover the cost of abortions, as is outlined in the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions. Yet, Planned Parenthood provides a plethora of health care services aside from abortion, and is therefore covered by Medicaid.
The lawsuit added that because of this, the provision “emphatically does not address federal funding for abortion.”
“Thus, this statute must be doing something more—and it is,” it read. “The Defund Provision is a naked attempt to leverage the government’s spending power to attack and penalize Planned Parenthood and impermissibly single it out for unfavorable treatment.”
“It does so not only because of Planned Parenthood Members’ long history of providing legal abortions to patients across the country, but also because of Planned Parenthood’s unique role in advocating for policies to protect and expand access to sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion,” it went on to say.
Planned Parenthood emphasized that these funding cuts would have “devastating consequences nationwide.”
Its website estimated that as many as 200 of its health centers would be at risk of shutting down, thus affecting the lives of the more than 1,000,000 patients that rely on Medicaid to cover their health care services through the nonprofit.
According to Planned Parenthood, 90 percent of these clinics are located in states where abortion is legal, particularly blue states.
The suit came a little over a week after the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 vote that Medicaid recipients could no longer use the program to cover Planned Parenthood visits in South Carolina. It also barred Medicaid recipients from suing the state over a clause that allows patients to choose their own healthcare provider.
President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Alexis McGill Johnson, told The Guardian last week that the situation feels “existential,” not just for the health care provider, but also “for communities that are relying on access to this care.”
“This case is about making sure that patients who use Medicaid as their insurance to get birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment can continue to do so at their local Planned Parenthood health center, and we will make that clear in court,” Johnson said in a statement.
