Supreme Court denies request to reinstate $4 million in funds for Okla. due to abortion policy

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Friday, September 06, 2024

United States Supreme Court (front row L-R) Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan, (back row L-R) Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pose for their official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on October 7, 2022, in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court has begun a new term after Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was officially added to the bench in September. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

The United States Supreme Court has declined to reinstate $4 million in federal family planning funds for Oklahoma because the state government refuses to allot the money for elective abortions.

In a brief order released Tuesday, the high court declined to give a writ of injunction on behalf of Oklahoma in its ongoing litigation with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

According to the order, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch would have granted the application for an injunction.

In October 2021, the HHS issued a final rule allowing Title X federal funding to go to family planning clinics that referred their patients for abortion counseling, reversing an earlier measure by the Trump administration.

In 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and thus allowed states to decide whether to ban abortion, Oklahoma took issue with a federal provision that required Title X funds to be used for counseling and referrals for abortions.

“HHS offered the state an alternative: Providers could give patients seeking pregnancy counseling or referrals the telephone number of a national call-in hotline instead. When Oklahoma rejected that option, HHS terminated the state’s grant,” explained legal expert Amy Howe.

“Oklahoma went to federal court, challenging the termination and seeking to require HHS to renew the grant for 2024-25. The district court denied the state’s request for temporary relief, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld that ruling.”

In March 2021, a group of 19 states led by Ohio filed a joint motion to stop the Biden administration from scrapping the Trump administration rule on Title X funding.

“To be sure, some States provide such funding. And many advocates would like to see more public funding. But the broader national consensus against funding elective abortion remains,” stated the joint motion.

“Title X reflects this consensus. Since its 1970 enactment, the law has funded non-abortion family planning. All the while, it has banned the use of Title X funds ‘in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.’”

In February 2022, however, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected an injunction request from the states, claiming that they “have not demonstrated that they will be irreparably harmed without the injunction."

Follow Michael Gryboski on Twitter or Facebook