Good news -- a majority of the Supreme Court voted not to hear a case that could allow states to defund Planned Parenthood by excluding the organization from their Medicaid programs.
In his dissent, arch-conservative Justice Clarence Thomas inadvertently gave the game away.
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, dissented. It takes four justices to agree to accept a case.
Thomas, suggesting the court was wary of taking a case with "Planned Parenthood" in the title, asserted the cases weren't about abortion rights but whether individuals have a right to challenge a state’s decision to eliminate a Medicaid provider.
“Some tenuous connection to a politically fraught issue does not justify abdicating our judicial duty," Thomas wrote. "If anything, neutrally applying the law is all the more important when political issues are in the background."
Abortion is the reason Planned Parenthood was targeted in the first place.
Even though the vast majority of Planned Parenthood clinics do not perform abortions, Republicans in several states have tried to defund Planned Parenthood because they believe an organization that performs abortions -- even if Planned Parenthood does not offer abortion services in their state -- should not be funded by taxpayers.
If you agree with Clarence Thomas; if you agree that this has nothing to do with abortion, then you would have to support the court's decision not to hear the case.
Every lower court that has looked at this has ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood because their opponents could not provide a single substantiated reason to exclude the provider. Singling out a provider for exclusion would require extraordinary evidence and Republican-controlled states have no evidence to speak of.
If this isn't about abortion, as Clarence Thomas says, then lower courts have already settled the matter.