Planned Parenthood is being sued by the state of Texas, and the group said that if the state wins, it could put it out of business.
Head of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Alexis McGill Johnson, claimed that “the baseless case was part of a deliberate campaign to close down Planned Parenthood health facilities.”
The case says that Planned Parenthood did not have the right to take money from Medicaid while the state was seeking to stop those payments.
Texas first told the abortion service provider in December 2016 that it would stop paying the provider with Medicaid money. The group sued, and a federal court agreed with them. This let the group keep getting Medicaid. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit changed that decision in 2020, and it stayed the same in 2021.
In this case, Planned Parenthood is said to have made a judicial appeal instead of a congressional appeal. The organization is also said to have claimed that all payments it received after February 1, 2017, were fraudulent.
Texas wants to get $17 million back from the federal government.
Abortion supporters are also upset that federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk will decide the case. In April, Kacsmaryk decided against the Biden administration and stopped the sale of the controversial abortion drug mifepristone.
At the time, activist Laura Packard wrote, “Who should decide if you can get needed medical services: an extremist MAGA judge or simply the physicians along with the FDA?”
Under the federal False Claims Act, the group could also be fined for each of the supposedly fraudulent payouts. Planned Parenthood says this could add to a total of over a billion dollars. On social media, people who back the abortion provider say that the case might result in costs up to $1.8 billion.
