By Kathy Ostrowski, Kansans for Life Legislative Director
Federal Judge Thomas Marten yesterday unsurprisingly acquiesced to the ACLU request that the Dodge City Family Planning (DCFP) clinic be allowed to join the Planned Parenthood lawsuit over Title X money distributed by the Kansas state health department.
The clinic is seeking immediate reinstatement of their prior Title X state contract for nearly $40,000 and attorney fees.
Judge Marten’s ruling today was unusually sharp-edged and personal. He bristled at the state’s allegation that DCFP was ‘judge-shopping’, that is, piggy-backing onto a case where the judge is already favorably directing funding to clinics.
This is an allusion to Planned Parenthood of Kansas Mid-Missouri in whose favor Marten has already ruled. Last August Judge Marten granted them a temporary injunction that halted the new Kansas budget proviso directing that Title X family planning money managed by the state health department be contracted primarily with full-service public clinics. He subsequently ordered an immediate state payment of approximately $58,000 to Planned Parenthood of Kansas Mid-Missouri.
Marten defended the addition of the financially-failing DCFP clinic because “it was stripped of Title X funding essentially as collateral of the Kinzer Amendment’s redefinition of eligibility standards.…[and] asserts a Supremacy Clause claim similar to that advanced by plaintiff Planned Parenthood.” (Lance Kinzer (R-Olathe) is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a state pro-life leader.)
Judge Marten refuses to be swayed by the state legal team’s contention that nothing in the federal Title X language forbids state grantees from selecting delegate agencies that are full-service health clinics rather than private, limited-service entities.
There is a rich irony is Marten’s decision because the Dodge City Family Planning Clinic does not perform abortions. This demonstrates that contrary to what Planned Parenthood told Judge Marten, the budget proviso was neutral in applicability and did NOT target abortion providers!
When contacted for comment today by Kansans for Life, the spokesman for the Attorney General’s office said “A.G. Derek Schmidt will continue to defend this law.”
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