SACRAMENTO, California — Attorney General Rob Bonta and 22 other Democratic attorneys general and governors are suing the Trump administration over a bid to strip federal funds from Planned Parenthood clinics.
“We need to just call it what it is: punishment for Planned Parenthood's constitutionally protected advocacy for abortion,” Bonta said at a press conference Tuesday morning. “The hypocrisy is really hard to ignore: a party that claims to be defenders of free speech only seem to care about it when it aligns with their own agenda.”
Congressional Republicans have wanted to cut funding to Planned Parenthood since Trump’s first term. If they’re successful, about 200 of the 600 clinics the nonprofit operates around the country could close, with over half of them in California.
“California is the most impacted state in the country,” said Jodi Hicks, CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. “It’s important to have a California lens on this.”
Bonta, the other attorneys general, and the governor of Pennsylvania argue in their filing that the Republican mega-spending and policy bill Trump signed in early July violates the First Amendment by targeting Planned Parenthood’s national umbrella organization for its advocacy. They also allege it violates the Constitution's spending clause by being too vague and illegally singles out Planned Parenthood for punishment without due process.
While the spending bill doesn’t mention Planned Parenthood by name, it set funding criteria that targets the organization directly. The law bars Medicaid funds from going to reproductive health clinics that provide abortions and are part of national networks that received over $800,000 in Medicaid funding. Bonta said it isn’t clear if any other providers would fall under the law, but at least one organization in Maine has also filed a suit.
Federal funds already cannot be used for abortion, but Planned Parenthood clinics rely heavily on Medicaid funding to cover other services, with as much as 50 percent of its patients nationally enrolled in the government program. In California, eight in ten patients are covered by Medicaid.
“The federal government is once again playing politics with our health care system, with devastating consequences,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “This administration’s shameful and illegal targeting of Planned Parenthood will make it harder for millions of people to get the health care they need.”
Bonta’s lawsuit is separate from one filed by Planned Parenthood clinics in Massachusetts and Utah along with Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the umbrella organization that oversees state affiliates which run the clinics.
In that case, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani on Monday ruled that her preliminary decision to block the legislation’s funding cut would remain in place. In siding with Planned Parenthood’s arguments, Talwani wrote that Congress was trying to illegally punish clinics for the political work of the broader Planned Parenthood organization. Planned Parenthood, she concluded, was the “‘easily ascertainable’ target of the law when the legislation was passed.”
Talwani also found that apart from the abortions the clinics perform, patients who rely on them for other services such as cancer screenings and testing for sexually transmitted diseases would be harmed if Medicaid funding was cut off.
In the week leading up to Talwani’s decision, California’s clinics were briefly defunded and five clinics closed down, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte announced.
“That lawsuit is just one strategy to fight back, and the reality is that an attack this severe requires a multi pronged response with both short and long term strategies,” Hicks said. “These attacks are not going away, and this administration has certainly shown their colors.”
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