Maryland Joins States Suing Federal Government Over Funding Ban For Planned Parenthood

By William J. Ford, Maryland Matters

July 30, 2025

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown (D) has joined in another lawsuit, this time against the Trump administration’s ban to block Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood and similar health care providers.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts challenges a provision that eliminates Medicaid reimbursements for one year to health care providers that provide abortions and received more than $800,000 in federal and state Medicaid funding in 2023.

The suit centers on a provision of the expansive tax and spending cuts package the Republican-controlled Congress passed this month. The bill signed by Republican President Donald Trump on July 4 bans Medicaid funding from health care providers “primarily engaged in family planning services, reproductive health, and related medical care.”

The lawsuit, joined by 22 Democratic attorneys general and Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, claims more than 1.1 million patients could lose access to care and nearly 200 Planned Parenthood health centers in 24 states could close.

Karen Nelson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Maryland, said earlier this month about one-third of the patients at its seven centers located throughout Maryland are Medicaid recipients.

State analysts estimate that it would cost the state about $2.5 million to make up for federal funds lost as a result of the provision that prohibits Medicaid funding for any reproductive health care.

“Attorney General Brown and the coalition are asking the court to block the Trump administration from implementing this devastating and unlawful provision, which will lead to widespread disruptions in preventive care and increase healthcare costs if allowed to stand,” Brown’s office said in a statement. “The States should not be co-opted into executing this unconstitutional provision.”

The defendants are the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and its administrator, Mehmet Oz.

Emily G. Hilliard, a spokesperson with the department, said in a statement Tuesday evening, that “States should not be forced to fund organizations that have chosen political advocacy over patient care. It is a shame that these democrat attorney[s] generals [sic] seek to undermine state flexibility and disregard longstanding concerns about accountability.”

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani of Massachusetts granted Planned Parenthood’s preliminary injunction to block the provision that would bar funding from the organization and its health care affiliates.

The judge wrote that the provision “runs afoul of the First Amendment and the Bill of Attainder Clause.” The clause is within the U.S. Constitution that prohibits Congress and state legislatures from passing laws to punish, or simply “singling them out” or “discriminating against individuals or groups” without a judicial trail, the judge wrote.

“The court is not enjoining the federal government from regulating abortion and it is not directing the federal government to fund elective abortions or any healthcare service not otherwise eligible for Medicaid coverage,” the judge wrote. “Instead, this order grants preliminary relief that prevents Defendants from targeting a specific group of entities—Planned Parenthood Federation Members—for exclusion from reimbursements under the Medicaid program where Plaintiffs have established a substantial likelihood that they will succeed in establishing that such targeted exclusion violates the United States Constitution…”

Planned Parenthood Federation of America, along with two of its affiliates in Massachusetts and Utah, filed a lawsuit three days after Trump signed the tax cut and spending plan into law July 4.