In Judge Priscilla Owen's opinion for the 11-5 majority, he wrote "Medicaid beneficiaries have an 'absolute right' … to receive services from a provider whom the State has determined is “qualified,” but beneficiaries have no right under the statute to challenge a State’s determination that a provider is unqualified."
The ruling also applies to Mississippi, which is within the 5th Circuit's jurisdiction.
This case started when Texas made its original decision to exclude Planned Parenthood from Medicaid funding back in 2016. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote in a statement that a series of undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress “plainly showed Planned Parenthood admitting to morally bankrupt and unlawful conduct, including violations of federal law by manipulating the timing and methods of abortions to obtain fetal tissue for their own research.”
David Daleiden, who led the undercover investigation referenced, said that the 5th Circuit's ruling validates the CMP videos, which pro-abortion advocates say are "deceptively-edited". "The full federal 5th Circuit's decision this week confirms that our undercover footage is accurate and reliable evidence of serious criminality in the abortion industry and fetal trafficking enterprises, and it affirms the broad authority that state and federal administrators have to defund entities like Planned Parenthood for illegally selling the body parts of aborted infants."
