A US appeals court agreed on Tuesday to allow the Trump administration to strip Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood health centers in 22 states and Washington DC.
The order from the three-judge panel of the Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals puts on hold an injunction issued by US district judge Indira Talwani. Talwani’s injunction had blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a provision of its massive tax-and-spending bill that blocks Planned Parenthood from receiving reimbursements from Medicaid, the US government’s health insurance program for low-income people, in the 22 states.
The panel’s decision is only the latest legal volley in the months-long war over the Trump administration’s provision. The appeals court previously lifted another order by Talwani in a separate case, brought by Planned Parenthood, that had also blocked the measure’s enforcement.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, called the Tuesday ruling disappointing but said he remained committed to “ensuring vulnerable Californians can access the healthcare they need”. Bonta, a Democrat, co-led the case with his counterparts from Connecticut and New York.
Planned Parenthood did not respond to a request for comment.
Republicans in Congress passed the provision as part of their One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Specifically, it bars Medicaid funding for tax-exempt organizations that provide family planning and reproductive health services if they perform abortions and received more than $800,000 in Medicaid funds during the 2023 fiscal year.
Planned Parenthood says the provision was passed with it in mind and has contributed to at least 20 of its health centers closing since Trump signed the measure into law in July. The reproductive healthcare giant has warned that the measure could ultimately lead up to 200 health centers to close. Because most of those centers are located in blue states that still permit abortion, their closure could dramatically curtail access to the procedure. The measure, advocates have said, amounts to a “back-door abortion ban”.
It is already broadly illegal to pay for abortions using federal dollars. Instead, Planned Parenthood uses Medicaid reimbursements to fund services such as STI tests, cancer screenings and the provision of contraception. In 2024, Planned Parenthood centers treated people who rely on Medicaid with more than 1.5m visits.
If those people can no longer go to Planned Parenthood for reproductive health services, experts say they will probably be left with nowhere to turn.
After the first circuit earlier this year paused Talwani’s initial injunction in Planned Parenthood’s favor, a group of Democratic attorneys general asked her to block the law’s enforcement again, but on different grounds.
Talwani, who was appointed by Barack Obama, agreed to do so on 2 December, saying the states were likely to succeed in establishing that the law constitutes an unconstitutional retroactive condition on their participation in the Medicaid program.
Talwani held that the law did not give the states clear notice as to which entities it covered and imposed a restriction they could not have anticipated after the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved their state Medicaid plans.
But on Tuesday, the first circuit panel – comprising only judges appointed by Democratic presidents – said the Trump administration had demonstrated it was likely to prevail on appeal in establishing the law was not ambiguous and that Congress had the power to make such changes.
