Supreme Court Rules States Can Cut Medicaid Funding for Planned Parenthood
Charlie Kirk Staff
06/26/2025

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that South Carolina may block Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood.
In a 6-3 decision, the justices overturned a Fourth Circuit ruling that had allowed an individual Medicaid recipient to file a federal civil rights lawsuit challenging the state’s exclusion of Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, stating that Medicaid law does not explicitly grant patients the right to sue. He emphasized that states have the discretion to determine which healthcare providers are “qualified” to participate in the Medicaid program—for instance, excluding doctors with felony convictions.
Gorsuch added that Planned Parenthood has the option to challenge its exclusion through South Carolina’s administrative procedures.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
“At a minimum, it will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them,” she wrote.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, previously argued that “taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize abortion providers who are in direct opposition to their beliefs.”
South Carolina pointed to its state law banning the use of taxpayer dollars for abortion as the basis for excluding Planned Parenthood. Under federal law, Medicaid funding is also restricted and cannot be used for most abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is at risk.
Planned Parenthood operates two clinics in the state—one in Charleston and another in Columbia.
Pro-life leaders hailed the high court’s Thursday ruling.
“Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer-funded gravy train is swiftly coming to an end,” SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said.
“Its days of posing as a ‘trusted health care provider’ are over as the truth is exposed — most recently, by revelations of botched procedures, open sewage and other horrifying conditions at their facilities across America and the tragic death of yet another young woman following a late-term abortion,” she said.