Supreme Court won’t stop Biden administration from withholding Title X funding from Oklahoma
Washington — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request from Oklahoma officials seeking to restore federal family planning grant funding to the state’s health department after it refused to offer patients a hotline phone number that would provide counseling on pregnancy options, including abortion.
The justices turned down the bid for emergency relief from the state, which had asked the Supreme Court to temporarily stop the Department of Health and Human Services from withholding $4.5 million in federal Title X funding from the Oklahoma State Department of Health. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they would have granted Oklahoma’s request.
The dispute is the latest involving abortion to land before the nation’s highest court in the wake of its June 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade. As more than half of the states banned or imposed stringent restrictions on abortions following the ruling, including Oklahoma, the Biden administration has sought to protect access at the federal level, including through an emergency care law that was at the center of a dispute before the justices in its most recent term.
filing, referring to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision reversing Roe. They continued, “HHS deliberately sought to impose the executive branch’s policy preferences on the states, including Oklahoma, and upset the federal-state balance on this important issue.”
But the Justice Department argued that nothing in the case impacts Oklahoma’s ability to regulate abortion within its borders and questioned how referring patients to a hotline could violate the state’s prohibition on advising or procuring an abortion.
The Oklahoma State Department of Health could also decline the Title X award, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a filing.
“HHS determined that counseling and referral are ‘critical for the delivery of quality, client-centered care.’ Without them, patients would be deprived of neutral information about ‘all pregnancy options,'” she wrote. “That runs squarely counter to Title X’s fundamental goal.”
Oklahoma had asked the Supreme Court to issue its decision by Aug. 30, the Biden administration’s deadline for when it would begin distributing the federal dollars to other entities.
A similar dispute over Title X funding for Tennessee is also playing out in the courts. That case involves a $7 million grant the Biden administration declined to issue after the state wouldn’t agree to provide Title X patients with the national call-in hotline where operators would supply them with referral information.
Tennessee, like Oklahoma, outlawed most abortions in the state after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, and said it would only offer to provide information and counseling for “all options that are legal” in the state.
A federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit declined to block the Biden administration from discontinuing the funding.
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Source: cbsnews.com