Oklahoma asks Supreme Court to block HHS from stripping federal planning grants over abortion ban

Oklahoma is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from stripping the state of federal family-planning grants because officials refuse to refer pregnant women to abortion counseling services. 

The state on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to intervene after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in July that HHS was allowed to withhold funding because the state did not meet the conditions for participation in the grant program. 

Title X grant funds previously held by the state health department were transferred to community organizations, and the state lost about $4.5 million. 

Most Title X clients are young and have low incomes; through the program, they receive low-cost, or no-cost, family planning and reproductive health care services. 

Title X says grants cannot be used “in programs where abortion is a method of family planning,” and a 2004 appropriations rider called the Weldon Amendment bars discrimination against state agencies that decline to provide referrals for abortions.  

But the Biden administration in 2021 required that state-funded providers who want to receive money from the Title X program give patients “neutral, factual information and nondirective counseling” about all their options, including abortion, followed by facts about where the service could be obtained, if asked. 

Oklahoma banned nearly all abortions in the wake of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Last year, the state refused to give Title X patients the phone number for a national hotline because it said the hotline was an abortion referral.  

The appeals court ruled that the national hotline did not encourage abortion merely by presenting it as an option. 

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R) said HHS’s actions violated the Weldon Amendment because it punished the state for declining to refer for abortions, even though that wasn’t a condition of the funding.  

The application was sent to Justice Neil Gorsuch, who by default handles emergency appeals arising from the 10th Circuit. He could act on the request alone or refer it to the full court for a vote.