By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) -A federal judge is standing by her decision to block the implementation of a provision in U.S. President Donald Trump’s recently passed tax and spending bill that would prevent Planned Parenthood health centers from receiving Medicaid funding.
The Trump administration on Friday asked U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston to dissolve what it called a “highly unusual” temporary restraining order she issued hours after Planned Parenthood sued over the law on Monday.
The administration said Talwani’s brief order provided no explanation for why she was blocking part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act the Republican-led Congress passed that bars health care providers like Planned Parenthood’s clinics that offer abortions from receiving Medicaid reimbursements.
Talwani, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, responded late Friday that such an order was necessary to prevent disruptions to health care until she could hear arguments on July 18.
But in light of the Trump administration’s request, she issued a new, amended temporary restraining order making clear that she had concluded Planned Parenthood was likely to succeed in proving the law violated the U.S. Constitution.
Planned Parenthood and the U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment.
Under the law, Medicaid funds cannot go to “prohibited” entities, certain nonprofits that provide abortion services, and their “affiliates”.
Planned Parenthood has said the law was drafted to specifically target its members and would have “catastrophic” consequences for its nearly 600 health centers if implemented, putting nearly 200 of them in 24 states at risk of closure.
Talwani said the bar on funding to affiliates created confusion among members of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the parent organization, that do not themselves qualify as prohibited entities, such as clinics that do not provide abortion services due to state-level bans.
Talwani said as a result, the law burdened the right of Planned Parenthood’s 47 members to associate with each other and their parent organization, which advocates in favor of reproductive health care policies, in likely violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
“The Supreme Court has ‘long understood as implicit in the right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment a corresponding right to associate with others’ in pursuit of desired political, educational, or social ends,” she wrote, citing a 1984 Supreme Court ruling.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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