New hearing set for familyplanning rules
A federal appeals court has granted a new hearing to states and abortionrights groups challenging the Trump administration’s new limits on familyplanning funding, which include a ban on abortion referrals by any agency receiving the funds.
A threejudge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had ruled on June 20 that the restrictions could take effect and would not interfere with women’s access to health care or drive doctors out of the program, known as Title X. On Wednesday, the court said a majority of its 22 participating judges had voted to set the ruling aside and order a new hearing before an 11judge panel, on a date not yet scheduled.
Title X funds birth control and reproductive care for lowincome patients, including screening for cancer and sexually transmitted diseases. The program serves more than 4 million patients, including 1 million in California. This year’s budget is $286 million.
Federal law bars use of any of the funds for abortions. The Trump administration’s regulations would prohibit public and private agencies that accept Title X funding from referring women for abortions, and would bar them from telling women which facilities provide abortions.
An agency could give a patient a list of acceptable health care providers as long as fewer than half offered abortions, and none was identified as an abortion provider. The rules would also require federally funded familyplanning providers to house abortion clinics in facilities separated from their Title X offices, an expensive provision that Planned Parenthood said would drive it out of the program.
The restrictions, which had been scheduled to take effect May 3, were challenged by 22 states, including California, as well as the District of Columbia, and medical and familyplanning organizations. They were blocked by three separate federal court injunctions, including an April 26 ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco.
Chen said the regulations would force medical providers to give “incomplete and misleading information” to pregnant women. He said they would also violate provisions of the 2010 federal health care law that prohibit the government from creating “unreasonable barriers to the ability of individuals to obtain appropriate medical care” or from interfering with “communications regarding a full range of treatment options.”
But the threejudge appeals court panel said last month that the administration’s rules would merely deny funding to some types of medical care and would not prevent patients from obtaining it on their own.
“There is a clear distinction between affirmatively impeding or interfering with something and refusing to subsidize it,” the panel said. It said the regulations would benefit both the government and the public by “ensuring that tax dollars do not go to fund or subsidize abortions” and would cause only “minor” harm, at most, to some patients.
The randomly selected panel consisted of three of the appeals court’s most conservative judges, Edward Leavy, Consuelo Callahan and Carlos Bea. The full court, which voted to grant the rehearing, has a majority of judges appointed by Democratic presidents and has been regularly criticized by President Trump for its rulings against his administration.
Attorney Ruth Harlow of the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday’s order “allows us to go back to court to ensure that the millions of lowincome people who rely on the nation’s only familyplanning program will continue to receive vital health services.”