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PA Supreme Court Declares Medicaid Funding Ban a Violation of the PA Constitution
The Pennsylvania constitution has an Equal Rights Amendment
While I don’t love the Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade, I do love the creativity that it has inspired. We had the synagogue in Florida which sued to overturn Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 15-week abortion ban because it is against the Jewish religion to ban abortion. I wrote about it here.
Last year, women in 8 states filed 15 lawsuits against existing or proposed abortion bans alleging the bans violated their freedom to practice their religions. Those religions included Judaism, Buddhism, Unitarian, Episcopalian, and the United Church of Christ. I wrote about it here.
Those are all challenges to the bans themselves. In Pennsylvania, a group of abortion providers filed a lawsuit in 2019 challenging a 1982 Pennsylvania law that prohibits the use of Medicaid to fund abortions. Their argument? That the law violates the Equal Rights Amendment of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
And the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court has agreed with them saying:
“To treat a woman differently based on a characteristic unique to her sex is to treat her differently because of her sex, which triggers enforcement of our Equal Rights…
