AUSTIN, Texas -- A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Texas can't cut off Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood over secretly recorded videos taken by anti-abortion activists in 2015 that started Republican efforts across the United States to defund the nation's largest abortion provider.
An injunction issued by U.S. District Sam Sparks of Austin comes after he delayed making a decision in January and essentially bought Planned Parenthood an extra month in the state's Medicaid program.
Texas is now at least the sixth state where federal courts have kept Planned Parenthood eligible for Medicaid reimbursements for non-abortion services, although questions remain over whether President Donald Trump will federally defund the organization.
Sparks' decision preserves what Planned Parenthood says are cancer screenings, birth-control access and other health services for nearly 11,000 low-income women.
Arkansas, Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi and Louisiana also have had similar efforts blocked.
As in other states, Texas health officials accused Planned Parenthood officials of making misrepresentation to investigators after the release of secretly recorded and heavily edited videos by an anti-abortion group last year. Investigations by 13 states into those videos concluded without criminal charges, and Planned Parenthood officials have denied any wrongdoing.
A Houston grand jury indicted two activists behind the videos over how they covertly gained access inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, but a judge later dismissed the charges.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the state intends to appeal in a statement that repeated accusations that Planned Parenthood manipulated the timing of abortions to benefit researchers. Planned Parenthood has denied those claims, and Sparks said there was no evidence the organization violated ethical or medical standards.
Sparks' opinion excoriated Texas for not providing "any evidence" of Planned Parenthood wrongdoing and stalling on the ouster for nearly a year.
"A secretly recorded video, fake names, a grand jury indictment, congressional investigations -- these are the building blocks of a best-selling novel rather than a case concerning the interplay of federal and state authority through the Medicaid program," Sparks wrote.
A Section on 02/22/2017