WASHINGTON (March 17, 2025) — The American Public Health Association, along with 490 leading public health deans, scholars and organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health and others have filed a public health amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. The brief urges the High Court to uphold a woman’s ability to legally enforce her right to receive Medicaid covered family planning services from the provider of her choice.
This case challenges South Carolina’s exclusion of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic from its Medicaid program for reasons unrelated to care quality, a decision that threatens access to essential healthcare for tens of thousands of beneficiaries.
The brief argues that failure to enable Medicaid beneficiaries to legally enforce their right to choose their family planning provider would seriously jeopardize the health of women and their families. It also points out that such a failure would likely expand contraceptive deserts, which already exist in states like South Carolina, which experiences high poverty and healthcare provider shortages.
According to research from the George Washington University Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity, South Carolina Medicaid beneficiaries already have less access to family planning providers compared to most other states.
“For more than half a century, family planning has been a mandatory Medicaid benefit,” said Lynn Goldman, the Michael and Lori Milken Dean of the GW Milken Institute School of Public Health and one of the amici. “Women must be free to choose their family planning provider in order to get high-quality services of importance for maternal and child health. This amicus brief urges the Court to uphold this freedom.”
The brief warns that failure to recognize Medicaid beneficiaries’ free choice of family planning provider as a privately enforceable right would open the door for states to arbitrarily block qualified providers based on political motives rather than patient health needs.
The Brief Highlights Benefits of High-Quality Family Planning:
Family planning services significantly improve maternal and child health outcomes by:
- Reducing unintended pregnancy.
- Reducing the risk of adverse health outcomes and infant mortality that result from untreated sexually transmitted infections.
- Helping detect and prevent reproductive health conditions that cause infertility or cancer.
Family planning services also result in considerable health savings, according to the brief.
“Family planning services are key to the health of women and their families and any actions that limit access, as South Carolina’s exclusion does, will lead to unnecessary harm,” said Georges C. Benjamin, M.D. Executive Director of American Public Health Association. “And, this preventable harm will be felt most by low income and underserved populations without the ability to travel distances for care.”
The brief calls for the court to uphold Medicaid beneficiaries’ right to seek relief from courts when states restrict access to qualified family planning providers for reasons unrelated to quality of care. The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in this case on April 2, 2025.
The brief can be accessed at the Supreme Court website here. The landing page for the entire docket in this case can be found here.
The amici are represented by Foley Hoag LLP in Washington, DC.
The views presented in the brief represent those of the amici and do not necessarily reflect the views of their institutions.