A lawsuit by state attorneys general over the Trump administration’s Medicaid cuts to Planned Parenthood and other centers providing abortion care will continue during the government shutdown, a federal judge ordered Wednesday.
The Trump administration sought to stay proceedings due to the government shutdown in a challenge by California and more than 20 other states and the District of Columbia to a one-year prohibition on Medicaid reimbursements for the centers.
But the interest the plaintiffs have in continuing the case “outweighs Defendants’ interest in a stay where counsel for Defendants may continue litigating during the lapse in funding pursuant to a court order,” Judge Indira Talwani of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts said in her order.
The case is one of several in which federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to continue litigating during the shutdown. Talwani’s order follows the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit’s Oct. 2 order denying the Department of Health and Human Services’ request for more time to provide details on its implementation of the federal provision stripping Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood and other large reproductive health centers.
The coalition of states, Planned Parenthood, and a network of Maine family planning providers have separately sued HHS over the provision in the federal tax and spending package signed into law this summer that strips Medicaid funds for a year to family planning centers that provide abortions and received more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023.
The states are seeking a preliminary injunction on the law’s enforcement, arguing the pause on reimbursements will force them to either take on the burden of paying for reproductive health services for Medicaid beneficiaries, or force patients to go without free to low-cost contraception, STI testing, cancer screenings, and other care offered by Planned Parenthood and other centers subject to the federal provision.
The Trump administration maintains that the law is focused on removing any federal support for centers providing abortion, especially after the US Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the US Constitution doesn’t confer a federal right to abortion.
The Hyde Amendment already prohibits Medicaid funds from being used to provide abortion care, and Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health centers maintain that any federal reimbursements only go toward family planning services and other care eligible for Medicaid coverage.
While the federal provision went into effect on Oct. 1, HHS has yet to provide guidance on which entities will be subject to the one-year pause on reimbursements.
Planned Parenthood has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Law is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.
The case is California v. HHS, D. Mass., No. 1:25-cv-12118, motion for stay on proceedings denied 10/8/25.
To contact the reporter on this story:
To contact the editor responsible for this story: