https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-declines-to-review-rulings-that-blocked-efforts-to-end-planned-parenthood-funding/2018/12/10/01061018-fc8a-11e8-83c0-b06139e540e5_story.html?utm_term=.38bf121ae18e&wpisrc=al_politics__alert-politics&wpmk=1

(Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
By Robert Barnes
December 10 at 10:05 AM
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review lower court decisions that blocked efforts in two states to end public funding to Planned Parenthood, refusing for now to get involved in state battles over abortion rights.
The cases did not touch on abortion itself, but three justices who said the court should have accepted the cases said that was the reason the court declined to get involved.
“What explains the court’s refusal to do its job here? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named ‘Planned Parenthood,’” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas.
He was joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch. But it takes four justices to accept a case, and two other of the court’s conservatives, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh did not join Thomas’s opinion.

The cases have to do with whether individual Medicaid recipients who receive services from providers such as Planned Parenthood have a right to challenge a state’s decision to cut off funding for the providers.
In cases from Kansas and Louisiana, lower courts said they do.
Thomas said that was an important issue the court should have accepted.
“It is true that these particular cases arose after several States alleged that Planned Parenthood affiliates had, among other things, engaged in ‘the illegal sale of fetal organs’ and ‘fraudulent billing practices,’ and thus removed Planned Parenthood as a state Medicaid provider,” Thomas wrote.
“But these cases are not about abortion rights. They are about private rights of action under the Medicaid Act. Resolving the question presented here would not even affect Planned Parenthood’s ability to challenge the States’ decisions.”