Attorney general appeals H.B. 1210 court injunction

Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller announced his office is appealing last week’s decision by U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt to issue an injunction against stripping Planned Parenthood of federal Medicaid money.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago will handle the appeal of the injunction, as well as Indiana’s administrative appeal of a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services decision to deny Indiana’s request to amend its state Medicaid funding plan because of Indiana’s decision to strip Planned Parenthood of funding.

“Both the legal challenge and the administrative appeal are headed to the same court, the U.S. 7th Circuit, which is where this dispute between the state and the federal government over what procedures we will allow our tax dollars to indirectly support should be heard,” Zoeller said.

Indiana filed a request to amend its Medicaid funding plan with HHS after HEA 1210, a bill which strips federal Medicaid funding of Planned Parenthood and creates additional restrictions on abortions, was passed in May.

Donald Berwick, the administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that administers the two programs, denied Indiana’s request in a letter dated June 1.

The letter threatened the partial or total withholding of Indiana’s more than $4 billion in annual Medicaid funds unless HEA 1210 was altered to allow federal funding to go to Planned Parenthood.

In the letter, Berwick argued it is illegal to deny Medicaid patients their right to free choice of family planning providers.

Lawyers for the state have argued Planned Parenthood would be able to receive federal funding again if it separated its abortion services into a different corporate entity.

It is already illegal for abortion services to be paid for by federal funding.

Planned Parenthood is confident it will prevail in its legal arguments, Planned Parenthood’s President and CEO Betty Cockrum said in a statement. “We find it regrettable that the Indiana Attorney General has chosen to invest even more state resources in an appeal.”

Indiana was the first state in the nation to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding.  Two other states, Kansas and North Carolina, have since taken similar action, although laws in those states only stripped Planned Parenthood of state funding.

— Zach Ammerman