Buried Under the TikTok News: The Supreme Court Took Another Abortion-Related Case

There are several ways that people or groups can try to bury news that's unpopular or controversial. One is the classic Friday news dump, or waiting until the last possible second of the work week to say something is happening. (See: Matt Kacsmaryk's ruling in the abortion pill case.) The other is a news sandwich, where you make multiple announcements, and hope people focus more on the first than the second. (See: Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich vetoing a six-week abortion ban, then signing a still-unconstitutional 20-week ban on the same day in 2016.)

The Supreme Court pulled the latter tactic on Wednesday when it first announced that it would hear the case about the forced sale of TikTok, a wildly popular video app. (A federal law says the Chinese-owned app needs to sell to an American company by January 19 or be banned in the U.S.) Next, the court said it was also taking up a challenge about whether states can kick Planned Parenthood out of their Medicaid programs simply because it provides abortions with non-Medicaid money. Funny timing!

The case, Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, came about after South Carolina declared that people with Medicaid insurance cannot get care like birth control, STI testing and treatment, and cancer screenings like Pap smears and breast exams at any clinic that also provides abortions. To be clear: South Carolina bans Medicaid from covering abortion unless the pregnant person's life is at risk or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. People with Medicaid insurance are allowed to choose any qualified provider for other care, but in 2018 Gov. Henry McMaster signed an executive order directing the state health department to deem abortion clinics unqualified because they also offer abortion and saying, in essence, that money is fungible.

The local Planned Parenthood affiliate and a patient sued the state and now here we are. For the real legal nerds, other states have also tried to kick abortion clinics out of Medicaid and federal appeals courts have split on whether it's legal. The Supreme Court almost always gets involved in so-called "circuit splits."

After news broke that the high court would take the case, McMaster wrote on Twitter that he was "confident" the justices would uphold the policy because, he claimed, "states shouldn't be forced to subsidize abortions." That's not what's happening here! State money doesn't go toward abortions (though it should).

The justices will hear the case sometime this spring, meaning a decision is likely in June 2025. If they had waited even just a few weeks longer to take it, it would have meant pushing the hearing into the next term, with a June 2026 decision, right before the midterm elections. Guess they didn't want that.

The very day before the court took the TikTok and Planned Parenthood cases, Gallup released a poll showing Americans’ confidence in the judicial system and courts dropped to a record-low 35 percent.

This move may not have been a Friday news dump, but the subtext was quite clear.

Also:

• The emergency abortions case is back in action (derogatory) and I covered the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals hearing for Jezebel. The lawyer for the state of Idaho said women and pregnant people cannot have abortions to prevent needing a limb amputated from sepsis—only if their life is at risk. The Trump administration is expected to take the same stance and drop the United States' lawsuit against Idaho.
• Relatedly: Here's even more evidence, via ProPublica, that Texas is trying to hide the bodies of people dying from its abortion ban.
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