Remember Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk? Last month, Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee to a federal court in Texas, tried to remove mifepristone, a drug used in more than half of all US abortions, from the market. His decision was so poorly reasoned that even the current, very conservative Supreme Court swiftly blocked it.
Now, a new set of right-wing litigants has sought him out again. This time, an anonymous anti-abortion activist has brought a case that effectively seeks to fine Planned Parenthood hundreds of millions of dollars, and give an enormous chunk of that money to a central figure in the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group. This activist’s lawsuit is backed by Texas’s Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The case, known as Doe v. Planned Parenthood, alleges that Planned Parenthood and its affiliates in Texas and Louisiana engaged in a years-long scheme to defraud those states’ Medicaid systems. When you add up the money the reproductive health provider allegedly owes, plus the various fines and penalties they could be hit with, Planned Parenthood estimates that they could be ordered to pay as much as $1.8 billion, more than enough to bankrupt Planned Parenthood Federation of America — the national organization that unites Planned Parenthood’s local affiliates — and wipe out its affiliates in Texas and Louisiana.
The lawsuit is also entirely without merit, and it seeks to impose draconian penalties on Planned Parenthood for doing nothing more than expecting these two states to comply with a federal court order.
In 2015, Louisiana attempted to terminate Planned Parenthood as a state-approved Medicaid provider, meaning that it could no longer provide health services to Medicaid patients and be paid for those services by the state. Texas attempted to do the same in 2017. But both of these efforts to cut off Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding were blocked by federal court orders. And so Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas and Louisiana…
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