Federal judge stops law to defund Kansas Planned Parenthood

August 15, 2011

Wichita, Kansas: Judge John Thomas Marten, of the United States District Court for the District of Kansas, has issued an injunction to temporarily stop a law that denies funding to Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. The controversial family-planning and abortion company requested the temporary injunction against the law, which would have redirected the state's federally-allocated family planning funds to public health departments and hospitals, rather than to Planned Parenthood and similar companies.

Marten ruled the law unconstitutional because it undermined a federally-funded program through additional restrictions. This, he reasoned, violated the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article VI, Clause 1), which sets the federal government as the "supreme Law of the Land". "The purpose of the statute was to single out, punish and exclude Planned Parenthood," Marten stated. This may have been the intention of some legislators. Gov. Sam Brownback, in fact, had boasted to the state GOP caucus prior to the vote that the law would make Kansas the second state in the nation (following Indiana) to "zero out funding of Planned Parenthood."

Planned Parenthood has sued the state and wants the law overturned. The injunction will remain in effect until the solution of the case. According to the Associated Press, the federal funds at issue would not actually be used for abortions, but for other reproductive healthcare services. However, in opposition to the injunction, the state explained that other groups in the area could offer the same services. Kansas has also raised the issue of state sovereignty. The Attorney General said, "It appears that the Court declared a duly-enacted Kansas statute unconstitutional without engaging in the fact-finding one would expect before reaching such a conclusion."