The U.S. Supreme Court has given the green light to President Joe Biden’s administration to slash $4.5 million in federal funding for family planning initiatives in Oklahoma. This decision follows the state’s refusal to refer women to pregnancy counseling services that might offer abortion information, a move that clashed with federal requirements.
The ruling denied Oklahoma’s plea to prevent the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from pulling the 2024 funding while the state pursues an appeal against a lower court’s decision. This dispute centers on Oklahoma’s resistance to the stipulations of a 1970 law, Title X of the Public Health Service Act, which mandates abortion referrals as part of the grant criteria for states and nonprofit organizations. A federal rule enacted in 2021 further clarified that these referrals should provide basic factual and contact information for medical providers but should not go as far as making appointments.
After the Supreme Court’s 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade, which had protected abortion rights for nearly half a century, Oklahoma implemented a near-total abortion ban. The state’s health department then ceased abortion referrals, rejecting a federal proposal to offer patients a national hotline for “nondirective counseling and referral information.”
When Oklahoma’s grant was revoked by the Biden administration, the state filed a lawsuit, claiming the termination breached constitutional limits on how Congress can attach conditions to federal funding. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Denver, declined to block the administration’s decision, prompting Oklahoma to seek the Supreme Court’s intervention.
Biden’s administration argued that Oklahoma had accepted the grant fully aware of the counseling and referral requirements that have been integral to the Title X program for most of its 54-year history. Notably, the Supreme Court had previously agreed to hear a challenge to a 2019 Title X regulation under former President Donald Trump, which prohibited funds for abortion referrals. However, the case was dismissed after Biden, who succeeded Trump, committed to reversing that policy.
