SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court decided Wednesday that it will reconsider last month’s ruling by a three-judge panel that allowed a Trump administration rule withholding family planning money from clinics that make referrals for abortion to take effect, even as legal challenges to the rule make their way through the court system.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided in an internal vote to rehear the case and to block the June 20 decision by three Republican appointees from being cited in the future.
That decision again puts the Trump administration rule on hold while it is challenged in federal court. The rule limits what federally funded health care providers can tell patients about accessing abortion services and requires that facilities offering abortion services be physically separated from facilities offering other reproductive health care services.
The ruling had been a major setback for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. They filed an emergency appeal, which will be heard by an en banc panel of 11 judges.
The decision that will be reconsidered said Trump could enforce his new rule pending the administration’s appeal of orders by judges in California, Washington and Oregon.
Earlier Wednesday, before the 9th Circuit decided to reconsider the ruling, a federal judge in Maine refused to block the Trump administration’s new rules from being implemented in the Pine Tree State.
U.S. District Judge Lance Walker made the decision after Maine Family Planning sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in March seeking to keep the so-called “gag rule” from taking effect. Maine Family Planning has said the new rules could jeopardize its clinics that provide reproductive health care to low-income and rural communities.
The Maine legal proceedings had been on hold before June 20, but were revived after the three Republican appointees to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the new regulations were “reasonable.”
[Maine judge refuses to block Trump ‘gag rule’ from taking effect]
The new rule, announced earlier this year, requires recipients of family planning funds to refer pregnant women to a non-abortion prenatal care provider.
The recipients may give women a list of providers that includes doctors who perform abortions but may not direct them to those physicians.
The rule also requires providers to encourage patients to discuss their situation with their families and to tell single women about the benefits of abstinence.
In addition, the administrative directive contained a requirement that providers keep their Title X-funded projects physically and financially separate from abortion services, a provision slated to take effect in March 2020.
That mandate would require providers to have separate offices and entrances for family planning and abortion services.
Washington, D.C., and 21 states, including California, challenged the rule, and medical associations have announced their opposition to it.
Planned Parenthood, which has said it would not comply with the rule, faces the loss of nearly $60 million in federal funds annually.
The panel that decided last month to permit Trump’s rule to take effect noted that the Title X family planning program at issue was limited by similar abortion-related restrictions in the past, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld them.
“The Final Rule’s prohibitions on advocating, encouraging, or promoting abortion, as well as on referring patients for abortions, are reasonable,” the panel wrote.
The three 9th Circuit judges whose decision now appears likely to be overturned were Edward Leavy, a Reagan appointee, and Consuelo M. Callahan and Carlos T. Bea, both appointees of President George W. Bush.
Wednesday’s decision to rehear the case was announced in a one-page order.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, reacting to the ruling, said the Trump administration has “no business interfering in women’s reproductive medical decisions.”
“We look forward to continuing our fight to protect women’s access to reproductive care,” Becerra said.
BDN reporter Charles Eichacker contributed to this report.