The Justice Department filed a motion on Friday to dissolve a restraining order preventing the Trump administration from blocking Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood clinics as mandated by the GOP megabill signed into law last week.
The motion intensifies the legal conflict following Massachusetts Judge Indira Talwani’s decision on Tuesday to grant Planned Parenthood’s request for a temporary restraining order of the provision defunding abortion providers in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump.
Chad Mizelle, chief of staff at the DOJ, announced his department’s position Friday morning on X, calling the temporary injunction on the defunding legislation “lawless.”
“Enjoining the Act of Congress is among the most serious and consequential exercises of the judicial power,” Mizelle said, quoting the DOJ’s motion. “It must be exercised with caution and restraint.”
The motion went on to emphasize that the law was “approved by Congress and signed by the President barely a week ago” and called the temporary restraining order “extraordinary” and “highly unusual.”
Federal funds are already prohibited from directly covering abortion procedures, per the Hyde Amendment, which was first implemented in the 1976 federal budget legislation. But anti-abortion advocates argue that any funding given to health centers that provide elective abortions indirectly subsidizes abortions due to the fungibility of money.
According to Planned Parenthood’s 2023-2024 fiscal report, more than $792 million of its funding was from government reimbursements and grants, representing roughly 44% of its annual operating budget. Much of that reimbursement comes from Medicaid.
Anti-abortion Republicans initially wanted the provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to prohibit Medicaid funds from subsidizing abortion providers for 10 years, but the language was changed last minute in the Senate to reduce it to only one year of defunding.
Planned Parenthood argued in its lawsuit asking for the injunction that the law violates members’ constitutional right to free association under the First Amendment and equal protection under the Fifth Amendment.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Alexis MicGill Johnson said on Monday, when the lawsuit was filed, that the law represents a “targeted attack on Planned Parenthood health centers and the patients who rely on them for care.”
“This case is about making sure that patients who use Medicaid as their insurance to get birth control, cancer screenings, and [sexually transmitted infection] testing and treatment can continue to do so at their local Planned Parenthood health center, and we will make that clear in court,” Johnson said.
TRUMP’S MEGABILL DEFUNDS PLANNED PARENTHOOD
The Supreme Court last month delivered a blow to Planned Parenthood on a similar issue in a case regarding whether states could prohibit their portion of the Medicaid budget from reimbursing abortion providers for non-abortion procedures or treatments.
The high court ruled in a 6-3 decision that Planned Parenthood and its patients were not able to sue with the hope of overturning South Carolina’s law prohibiting state Medicaid dollars from reimbursing abortion providers, opening the door for more anti-abortion states to do the same.