Trump administration rescinds Obama guidance on Medicaid coverage for Planned Parenthood News
Trump administration rescinds Obama guidance on Medicaid coverage for Planned Parenthood

[JURIST] The Trump administration announced [letter, PDF] in a letter to state Medicaid directors on Friday that it will be rescinding the Obama administration’s guidance [letter, PDF] that made it more difficult for state Medicaid programs to refuse to cover birth control and other reproductive health services.

Obama’s 2016 guidance said that “Providing the full range of women’s health services neither disqualifies a provider from participating in the Medicaid program, nor is the provision of such services inconsistent with the best interests of the beneficiary, and shall not be grounds for a state’s action against a provider in the Medicaid program.”

The Trump administration said [official website] that Obama’s guidance may have gone beyond “merely interpreting” a statute, which is in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. The Trump Administration says it is “restoring state flexibility” to the Medicaid programs by returning the policy to how it was prior to 2016.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.