Supreme court allows US to withhold Oklahoma’s family planning fund

The US supreme court will allow the Biden administration to withhold millions of dollars in grant money from the state of Oklahoma over its refusal to provide information about abortion providers to patients who seek it. In an order released on Tuesday, the nine-member court said an injunction filed by the state had been denied in a 6-3 decision. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch were the three who would have granted Oklahoma’s application for relief.

Tuesday’s order reaffirms two previous lower-court decisions in which judges determined a lawsuit filed against the Biden administration by the state of Oklahoma over the taking back of the funds was unlikely to succeed.

The grant at the center of the legal battle – Title X family planning program – is distributed by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In 2021, HHS created a new rule for grant recipients that required them to offer “non-directive”, neutral information about health and family planning options, including on abortion, and to offer people referrals to medical providers, including those who offer abortion services.

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The following year, HHS approved a grant to Oklahoma’s health department, but reminded the state it had to comply with the new rule – a point that HHS reiterated after the landmark 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned the national right to abortion – came down, according to court records. That same year, Oklahoma’s governor signed one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws, but the HHS determined that state law did not preclude them from meeting the requirement for neutral information on abortion and referrals to providers upon request.

In March last year, Oklahoma accepted another Title X grant from the HHS. To satisfy the 2021 rule, the state promised to provide patients with a “national call-in” phone number that would provide them with neutral information. But by May, Oklahoma officials had removed the phone number, prompting HHS to give the state 30 days to come into compliance, which Oklahoma refused to do.

In September, HHS redirected the $4.5m in grant funding away from the state, and gave it to Missouri-based organizations. Oklahoma appealed the move, and in November the state attorney general sued the Biden administration, arguing that Biden officials had “overreached” by taking the funds away.