AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal judge has stopped Texas from cutting off Medicaid dollars to Planned Parenthood over secretly recorded videos taken by anti-abortion activists in 2015.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks on Tuesday preserves what Planned Parenthood says are non-abortion services to nearly 11,000 low-income women. Texas originally intended to defund Planned Parenthood in January, but Sparks told the state to wait pending his ruling.
Federal courts have consistently thwarted Republican-controlled states from denying Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood over heavily edited videos that claimed to show the nation’s largest abortion provider profiting from sales of fetal tissue for medical research.
Planned Parenthood has denied wrongdoing, and investigations in 13 states didn’t result in criminal charges.
Arkansas, Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi and Louisiana have also had similar efforts blocked.
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Thank you Judge Sparks! Texas Repuglicans hate women. Thank you for not indulging their misogyny.
More details, TPM! Who brought this case- PP, or any of the other civil rights groups, or a private individual? Can this ruling be appealed or is this it? What were his grounds for blocking the law- technical or substantive? This article leaves me with more questions than answers.
Great news!
http://www.statesman.com/news/judge-texas-cannot-oust-planned-parenthood-from-medicaid/1RO6mknpFLfUU04y2pBeqM/
He’s a Republican, too. Appointed to the bench by George H. W. Bush in 1991.