California abortion rule declared illegal
Violation could cost the state federal health care funds, Trump administration warns
In the latest clash between the Trump administration and California, federal health officials Friday said the Golden State’s requirement that all health insurers in the state provide coverage for abortions violates federal law and could result in a loss of federal funding.
Gov. Gavin Newsom dismissed the threat as politically motivated. The announcement came as President Donald Trump was set to become the first president to speak at the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., protesting the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
“No one in America should
be forced to pay for or cover other people’s abortions,” said Roger Severino, director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, which issued the violation notice. “We are putting California on notice that it must stop forcing people of goodwill to subsidize the taking of human life, not only because it’s the moral thing to do, but because it’s the law.”
Newsom countered that “the Trump Administration would rather rile up its base to score cheap political points and risk access to care for millions than do what’s right.”
The action stemmed from two complaints alleging that California engaged in unlawful discrimination when the state’s Department of Managed Health Care in August 2014 ordered that all health insurers under its jurisdiction offer coverage for elective abortion
in every plan they offer.
The complaints were from the Missionary Guadalupanas of the Holy Spirit, a Catholic order of religious sisters in Los Angeles, and Skyline Wesleyan Church, a nonprofit Christian church in La Mesa, the Health and Human Services department said. Those organizations’ religious beliefs, the department said, preclude them in good conscience from helping to pay for insurance coverage for elective abortions.
The department said its civil rights office determined that California’s mandate violated the Weldon Amendment, which prohibits states that receive federal funding from compelling health care plans to fund abortion, by continuing to require objecting health care entities to cover the procedure. If the state doesn’t eliminate its abortion coverage mandate, it said, California could face “limitations on continued receipt of certain HHS funds.”
The federal health department did not say how much money might be at stake. Severino said in an
interview that “California is a very large consumer of HHS funds” but acknowledged that federal laws may limit what can be withheld.
“We’ll go wherever the facts and the law takes us,” Severino said.
Newsom said on Twitter that “Trump is threatening to take away ALL OF OUR HEALTHCARE FUNDING,” saying the state would lose “TENS OF BILLIONS of dollars” that provide health care for “10 MILLION PEOPLE,” including the poor, sick, children and elderly.
Newsom said the same federal health department under former President Barack Obama had four years ago issued an opinion confirming the state’s abortion coverage mandate complied with the Weldon Amendment in federal law.
Attorney General Xavier Becerra said that “California will defend women’s constitutional rights to control their own body and health care.” He said his office has joined efforts in the past two years to fight laws restricting abortion in Arkansas,
Louisiana, Mississippi and Ohio and challenged efforts to eliminate a contraception coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
But Severino said his department’s earlier opinion under his predecessor was issued “erroneously.”
It is the second time the federal health department has deemed California in violation of federal conscience statutes. A year ago, the department’s civil rights office said California violated the Weldon and Coats-Snowe amendments when it subjected pregnancy resource centers in the state to potential fines for refusing to post notices advising women about free or low-cost abortions. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled the state’s actions likely violated the pregnancy resource centers’ free speech rights.
The administration’s move drew condemnations from leaders of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and NARAL Pro-Choice California, who noted that it followed new state legislation
aimed at expanding access to abortion.
“This is another attempt by the Trump administration to come after California, the state that most defies his efforts to undermine reproductive freedom,” said NARAL Pro-Choice California Director Shannon Hovis.
But the Alliance Defending Freedom, which sued California on behalf of Skyline Wesleyan and other churches over the abortion mandate, cheered the move.
“For years, California’s Department of Managed Health Care has demonstrated hostility to churches by forcing them to pay for elective abortions,” the group’s lawyer Denise Harle said.
As part of a long-running policy battle, the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to pull federal funding for California in various disputes with the Golden State. The Department of Transportation moved to cancel a $929 million grant to California’s high-speed rail project and may try to claw back an additional $2.5 billion the bullet train program already has received.
Courts have blocked recent Justice Department efforts to deny criminal justice grants to “sanctuary cities” that refuse to help U.S. immigration agents. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year threatened to withhold billions of dollars in federal highway funding if California didn’t improve its air quality. Trump himself in 2017 suggested on Twitter he would deny federal funds “if U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech” for cancelling an appearance by conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos amid violent protests, though he did not follow through.
Before Trump, the Obama administration threatened to block federal funds for states that discriminated against Planned Parenthood and didn’t allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice, though it never actually did so.