Appeals court panel rules in favor of Trump defunding Planned Parenthood

December 16, 2025

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has overruled a lower court decision stopping the Trump administration from defunding Planned Parenthood.

The Christian Post reports that the appeals court panel issued a ruling last Friday in the case of Planned Parenthood Federation of America et al v. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., et al.

The case arose over a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in July, which barred providing Medicaid funding to certain abortion providers for one year.

Circuit Judge Gustavo A. Gelpí authored the panel opinion which vacated the district court ruling and sent the case back to that court for further review.

Gelpí rejected the lower court’s claim that withholding the funding was a punishment and noted that the measure “imposes no fine or other penalty for past conduct” but rather “establishes new conditions on the receipt of appropriated funds in service of a new policy goal favored by Congress.”

According to the Christian Post, Gelpí wrote, “That the law imposes a difficult choice on the recipient of federal funds does not demonstrate that Congress is punishing the recipient for past action.”

The panel opinion also stated that there were, “plausible reasons for treating ‘prohibited entit[ies]’ differently from other abortion providers, particularly where Congress viewed these entities as the most significant recipients of Medicaid funds.”

President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill on July 4, which included a one year temporary ban on abortion providers receiving federal Medicaid funding for non-abortion services.

Planned Parenthood, which receives about a third of its funding from state and federal funding, filed a lawsuit against the measure, saying it could force them to close as many as a third of its 600 facilities nationwide.

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