The Supreme Court’s generosity toward President Trump’s flagrant violations of constitutional norms has cast a shadow long enough to obscure nearly everything else about the court’s term that ended last week. While that’s understandable, there is one decision, issued during the crush of the final days, that shouldn’t be overlooked. Not only will its immediate impact be significant, but it also reveals something about the current majority’s pursuit of a long-term goal: ridding American law of the notion that if a right is violated, there must be a remedy.
The governor of South Carolina — which bans abortion at six weeks of pregnancy — issued an executive order prohibiting clinics that provide abortions from receiving state Medicaid funding. Planned Parenthood sued, and the ensuing 6-3 Supreme Court decision in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic dismissed that lawsuit, freeing the state to eject Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program. The decision is likely to require Planned Parenthood to reduce services or even close clinics in South Carolina — and in any other states that might choose to follow South Carolina’s lead.
But this case was not really about abortion, which South Carolina’s Medicaid plan doesn’t cover. Rather, the state sought to punish Planned Parenthood by withholding its eligibility for Medicaid reimbursement for the full range of other reproductive health services that its clinics provide, depriving the organization of a vital source of revenue***continued
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