The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a request from Oklahoma to restore millions in federal family-planning grants that the Biden administration withheld after the state announced that it would no longer provide access to abortion counseling services.
Oklahoma had sought emergency relief after a divided three-judge panel of an appeals court in July temporarily paused the funding as a lower-court dispute played out over whether state officials could refuse to refer pregnant women to counseling services that presented abortion as an option.
The court’s brief, unsigned order gave no reasons, as is common when it acts on emergency applications. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented, saying they would have reinstated the grants.
The case was the latest instance in which the justices have addressed a dispute over restrictions on abortion after they overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Since then, 22 states, including Oklahoma, have either banned or limited access to the procedure.
The dispute centers on when states should receive federal grants focused on family planning. In establishing the program in 1970, Congress directed the Department of Health and Human Services to lay out eligibility requirements. Among them: Applicants must offer counseling and referrals for all manner of issues, including abortion.
Oklahoma’s health department was among the grant recipients for 2022.
But after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Health and Human Services Department told grant recipients that they must continue to offer counseling and referrals for all options, including abortion.
Months later, Oklahoma raised concerns about the stipulation, arguing that it stood at odds with its strict abortion laws.
The federal agency responded by suggesting that Oklahoma provide such referrals through a national call-in phone line.
Even as the state accepted the grant in March 2023, agreeing to disclose the call-in number as a condition, shortly after, it “decided to stop sharing” that information, the appeals panel wrote.
The agency then terminated the grant.
The state challenged the decision, asking a federal judge to temporarily force the government to provide the funds. When the judge ruled against Oklahoma, the state appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver.
The state presented three arguments, saying that for one, Congress’s spending power did not allow it to delegate the grant eligibility requirements to the Department of Health and Human Services. It added that the requirements violated a federal law known as the Weldon Amendment, which prohibits a federal or state agency from distributing money if it discriminates against a “health care entity” that does not provide or pay for abortions. Finally, the state argued that the federal agency had acted arbitrarily and capriciously.
A majority of the appeals panel rejected all three arguments, saying that the agency had acted in its power and that Oklahoma had “likely acted knowingly and voluntarily” when it accepted the terms of the grant.
The panel added that the Department of Health and Human Services’ proposal that Oklahoma provide a national call-in number was not the same as referring someone for an abortion.
In asking the Supreme Court to intervene, Oklahoma called the appeals court ruling “unfortunate,” arguing that it ignored Supreme Court precedent on the congressional spending power and the language of the Weldon Amendment.
Lawyers for Oklahoma argued that withholding grant funding would be “devastating” to the state because the money offered critical public health services in about 70 city and county health departments across Oklahoma.
“In many instances, particularly in rural Oklahoma, the county health department is one of the only access points for critical preventative services for tens or even hundreds of miles,” they wrote in their brief.
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