By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -A federal judge on Monday blocked enforcement of a provision in U.S. President Donald Trump’s recently enacted tax and spending bill that would deprive Planned Parenthood and its members of Medicaid funding, saying it is likely unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued a preliminary injunction after finding the law likely violated the U.S. Constitution by targeting Planned Parenthood’s health centers specifically for punishment for providing abortions.
That provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by the Republican-led Congress denied certain tax-exempt organizations and their affiliates from receiving Medicaid funds if they continue to provide abortions.
The U.S. Department of Justice argued that “the bill stops federal subsidies for Big Abortion” and urged Talwani not to let Planned Parenthood and its members “supplant duly enacted legislation with their own policy preferences.”
Talwani, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, said the law’s text and structure made clear that it was crafted to cover every member of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the parent organization, even if they were not named.
That specificity likely transformed the provision at issue into an unconstitutional “bill of attainder,” an act of Congress that wrongly seeks to inflict punishment without a trial, the judge said.
“Plaintiffs are likely to establish that Congress singled them out with punitive intent,” Talwani wrote.
She said the law also violated Planned Parenthood members’ equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment and burdened the right of some who do not provide abortions to associate with their parent organization in likely violation of the First Amendment.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The judge last week had issued a partial injunction that only covered some Planned Parenthood members. Because an earlier temporary restraining order was expiring, Planned Parenthood said many health centers were forced to stop billing for Medicaid services ahead of Monday’s ruling.
Planned Parenthood has said the law would have “catastrophic” consequences for its nearly 600 health centers, putting nearly 200 of them in 24 states at risk of closure.
“We will keep fighting this cruel law so that everyone can get birth control, STI testing and treatment, cancer screenings, and other critical health care, no matter their insurance,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s president, said in a statement.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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