A federal judge put a hold Tuesday on the part of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill budget law that ordered state Medicaid programs to stop doing business with Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.
Judge Indira Talwani, a Biden appointee to the court in Rhode Island who has emerged as a frequent Trump adversary, said the law is too vague for states to be able to follow.
She said the law bars Medicaid from doing business with “prohibited entities,” but it isn’t clear enough on who falls under that category. She said it violates the Constitution’s demand that Congress gives “clear notice” when it puts conditions on spending.
She issued a preliminary injunction against that part of the budget law. She stayed the injunction for a week to allow for an appeal.
Judge Talwani said Planned Parenthood and other clinics that provide abortions as part of their services also often offer birth control and other reproductive services that are crucial to communities.
Blocking them from Medicaid funding could leave those communities without immediate options.
“Where a state system is already at capacity, a loss of one of the state’s largest providers of care for Medicaid patients would mean that at least some of these patients will not be able to access a new provider for family planning services, reproductive care and related medical care,” she wrote in her 45-page ruling.
Judge Talwani had previously ruled in a related challenge, finding that part of the bill specifically blocking money going to Planned Parenthood was likely unconstitutional.
A federal appeals court put that ruling on hold.
Judge Talwani was also one of the judges who ruled against the Trump administration’s attempt to delay some food stamp payments amid the government shutdown, arguing the program lacked money.
