Texas can remove Planned Parenthood from the state’s Medicaid program after state District Judge Lora Livingston denied the organization’s request for an injunction on Wednesday.
The denial cements a November ruling in which the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Texas’s decision to withhold Medicaid funding from the organization.
Thomas Watkins, a lawyer representing Planned Parenthood, said during a February hearing that Texas “doesn’t care about what happens to the low-income folks, the folks who cannot afford to go to other places, that don’t have insurance, that need to have this kind of care,” according to the Texas Tribune.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton praised the November ruling allowing for Planned Parenthood’s exclusion, saying, “Planned Parenthood is not a ‘qualified’ provider under the Medicaid Act, and it should not receive public funding through the Medicaid program.”
Paxton referred to undercover videos shot in 2015 that he said “plainly showed Planned Parenthood admitting to morally bankrupt and unlawful conduct.”
The decision will take effect Thursday, which Planned Parenthood says leaves thousands of patients with “few places to turn.”
Texas health officials had told Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid patients to find new doctors by Feb. 3, but a judge issued a restraining order on that day to prevent Texas from moving forward with its removal of the health provider from Medicaid.
Lawyers for Planned Parenthood have argued that Texas did not give a notice of termination after the 5th Circuit’s ruling, but a lawyer representing the state said its notice of termination was sent back in 2016.
Benjamin Walton, who is representing the state, said Planned Parenthood missed its chance to stop the termination from taking place after the November ruling.
“The law says you have 15 days to request an administrative hearing. Their 15 days came and went. They did not request [an] administrative hearing,” Walton said. “So as a matter of law, their termination was effective. There is no law requiring a re-notice, a reissuance of notice at any point in time.”
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In her ruling, Livingston sided with Walton, saying that in their request, the Planned Parenthood groups “cite no authority for the proposition that a court injunction requires the [Texas Office of the Inspector General] to re-notice its termination.”
