AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Texas can’t cut off Medicaid dollars to Planned Parenthood over secretly recorded videos taken by anti-abortion activists in 2015 that launched Republican efforts across the U.S. to defund the nation’s largest abortion provider.
An injunction issued by U.S. District Sam Sparks of Austin comes after he delayed making decision in January and essentially bought Planned Parenthood an extra month in the state’s Medicaid program.
Texas is now at least the sixth state where federal courts have kept Planned Parenthood eligible for Medicaid reimbursements for non-abortion services, although a bigger question remains over whether President Donald Trump will federally defund the organization.
Sparks’ decision preserves what Planned Parenthood says are cancer screenings, birth control access and other health services for nearly 11,000 low-income women. Texas originally intended to boot Planned Parenthood in January but Sparks told the state to wait pending his ruling.
Arkansas, Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi and Louisiana have also had similar efforts blocked.
Like in those states, Texas health officials accused Planned Parenthood officials of making misrepresentation to investigators following the release of secretly recorded and heavily edited videos by an anti-abortion group last year. Investigations by 13 states into those videos have concluded without criminal charges, and Planned Parenthood officials have denied any wrongdoing.
A Houston grand jury indicted two activists behind the videos over how they covertly gained access inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, but a judge later dismissed the charges.
Planned Parenthood serves only a fraction of the 4.3 million people enrolled in Medicaid in Texas.
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OIL OUTLOOK
Texas’ oil and natural gas industry added 4,700 new jobs between September and December last year and is starting to “ease out of the dramatic downturn.” That’s the message from Texas Oil and Gas Association President Todd Staples, anyway.
On a media conference call Tuesday, Staples said that, despite the downturn, his industry paid $9.4 billion in state and local taxes and royalties in fiscal year 2016.
The energy sector lost nearly 100,000 jobs statewide as oil prices crashed from 2014’s $110-plus per barrel peak to less than $30 last year. They’re improving, but Staples said projecting prices only up to $59 per barrel through fiscal year 2019 was “fairly realistic.”
That likely means little relief for Texas Legislature budget writers already struggling with tighter coffers caused by plummeting oil prices.
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VOTER ID REVISITED
A top Texas state senator on Tuesday proposed legislation revising a strict law requiring photo ID at the polls.
Republican Sen. Joan Huffman’s bill seeks to comply with a federal court’s ruling last year that found Texas’ law discriminatory.
The proposal keeps the current law the same. But it would make permanent an option ordered by a federal appeals court allowing people without an accepted ID to vote by signing an affidavit declaring that they have a reasonable impediment stopping them from doing so.
A recent Associated Press analysis found that hundreds of Texans may have voted improperly by using affidavits to cast ballots despite attesting to actually having an acceptable ID.
Huffman’s bill also creates a third-degree felony offense for making a false statement on the affidavit.
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CAMPUS SEXUAL ASSAULT BILLS
An Austin Democratic state senator on Tuesday filed a package of bills requiring Texas colleges to adopt “affirmative consent” policies for sexual contact and create anonymous online reporting tools for assault victims.
The bills were announced by Kirk Watson, who got his undergraduate and law degrees from Baylor University. The school has been rocked by a sexual assault scandal that led to the firing of football coach Art Briles and the ouster of university president Ken Starr.
One of Watson’s bills would ensure students are not punished by school conduct codes for underage drinking or other rules violations if they report an assault.
More than a dozen women have sued Baylor over the last year alleging that the Baptist school long ignored or mishandled their claims of assault.
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ON DECK
The House reconvenes at 10 a.m. on Wednesday and the Senate is in an hour later. The House is still waiting for major bills to clear committee, but the upper chamber may soon get a floor vote on a constitutional convention proposal which Gov. Greg Abbott has made a top legislative priority.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The Constitution plainly guarantees law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms outside of the home for self-defense,” Attorney General Ken Paxton, in announcing Tuesday that Texas was joining a 26-state coalition challenging before the U.S. Supreme Court the constitutionality of gun restrictions in San Diego County, California.
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