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The Supreme Court invented a special legal rule solely to screw Planned Parenthood

A new SCOTUS decision raises new doubts about whether a decision against a major abortion provider had any basis in law.

About a year ago, the Supreme Court handed down a baffling decision in Medina v. Planned Parenthood (2025). In Medina, South Carolina committed an obvious violation of federal Medicaid law, but the Court’s Republican majority seemed to bend over backward to prevent the patients affected by this legal violation from suing to enforce their rights. Among other things, the Court’s opinion in Medina was at odds with a decision the justices handed down just two years earlier in Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski (2023).

As I wrote at the time, the best explanation for Medina was not legal; it was political. South Carolina broke federal law specifically because it illegally cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. The Republican justices appear to have bent the rules to ensure that an abortion provider would be defunded.

Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court handed down a new opinion in FS Credit Opportunities v. Saba Capital Master Fund, which only adds to the mystery about why Medina came down the way it did. The facts of FS Credit are quite different from the issues in Medina — FS Credit is a securities law case asking when investors may sue investment funds, while Medina concerned when patients may sue states for violating Medicaid law. But the legal issues in FS Credit and Medina are very similar. They both involve a legal doctrine known as “implied causes of action.”

Although Medina is the Court’s most recent case (prior to FS Credit) that deals with implied causes of action, the FS Credit decision does not cite Medina anywhere. Instead, it quotes heavily from decisions that the Court refused to follow in Medina. And it explicitly embraces a legal rule that the Court seemed to reject in Medina.

The rules governing implied causes of action are complicated enough to reduce even experienced lawyers to tears. But, if you bear with me, it will be difficult to avoid a simple conclusion: The Court appears to be manipulating these rules to achieve outcomes preferred by the Republican justices and the anti-abortion movement.

What is an implied cause of action?

Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s opinion in FS Credit begins with a simple declarative sentence: “Congress, not the Judiciary, decides who may enforce the law.” Not all federal laws may be........

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