Texas Judge Grants Restraining Order to Keep Planned Parenthood on State's Medicaid Program

photo credit: Bill Oxford / Unsplash

It was expected last week that Planned Parenthood would no longer be awarded Medicaid funding by the state of Texas; since the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the government's decision to do just that. Before the ruling was scheduled to take effect, however, a county judge undercut the Appeals Court by issuing a restraining order preventing Texas from removing three Planned Parenthood clinics from the state's list of eligible Medicaid providers.

After Planned Parenthood argued that Texas did not issue a "proper termination notice" under the state law, Travis County Judge Maya Guerra Gambala issued a restraining order late on Feb. 3 to prevent Texas from blocking Planned Parenthood from Medicaid funding. Gambala set a hearing for Feb. 17 to determine whether she will issue a temporary injunction to keep Planned Parenthood in Texas's Medicaid program.

Texas argues that it did issue a termination notice in Jan. 2016, sparking five years of litigation.

National Right to Life, which has been following this battle since the beginning, wrote,

"Planned Parenthood was notified of the final decision to terminate contracts in December of that year, more than a year after Texas officials first moved to remove Planned Parenthood from all Medicaid programs. The following month, after three days of testimony and arguments in the U.S. District Court in Austin, Judge Sam Sparks, a reliable Planned Parenthood ally, issued the initial injunction."

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