The U.S. Supreme Court will allow the Biden administration to withhold millions of dollars in government grants. the state of Oklahoma for refusing to provide information about abortion providers to patients who request it. In a order released On Tuesday, the nine-judge court said it had denied a writ filed by the state in a 6-3 decision. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch were the three who would have approved Oklahoma’s request for relief.
Tuesday’s order confirms two previous lower court rulings in which judges ruled that a lawsuit filed by the state of Oklahoma against the Biden administration over reclaiming the funds was unlikely to succeed.
The grant at the center of the legal battle—the Title X family planning program—is distributed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In 2021, HHS created a new rule for grant recipients that required them to provide “nondirective,” neutral information about health and family planning options, including abortion, and to offer people referrals to health care providers, including those who provide abortion services.
The following year, HHS approved a grant to Oklahoma’s health department but reminded the state that it had to comply with the new rule — a point HHS reiterated after the historic Dobbs decision of 2022that would have nullified the nation’s right to abortion — was rejected, according to court records. That same year, Oklahoma’s governor signed one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws, but HHS ruled that state law did not prevent it from complying with the requirement for neutral abortion information and referrals to providers upon request.
In March of last year, Oklahoma accepted another Title X grant from HHS. To comply with the 2021 rule, the state promised to offer patients a “national call-in” phone number that would provide them with neutral information. But by May, Oklahoma officials had removed the phone number, prompting HHS to give the state 30 days to comply, which Oklahoma refused to do.
In September, HHS diverted the $4.5 million in grant money from the state and gave it to organizations in Missouri. Oklahoma appealed the move, and in November the state’s attorney general said has sued the Biden administrationarguing that Biden officials had “gone too far” by taking away the funds.