The U.S. Supreme Court today sided with South Carolina.

Ruling Planned Parenthood in one of its patients could not sue over that state's effort to deny it Medicaid funds.

The six to three decisions split along ideological lines.

And the ruling paves the way for other states to more easily cut off funding to abortion care providers.

To help us break down the case and its implications,

we're joined now by Amy Howe, PBS News Supreme Court analyst and co-founder of SCOTUS blog. Always good

to see you. Good to see you too, thanks. So this case has big implications, of course, for

Planned Parenthood and ultimately abortion access, but the issue in front of the judges was more

technical. Tell us about that and the broader impact here.

Yeah, so it is a very technical case. So Medicaid contains what's known as the any qualified provider

provision, which allows Medicaid patients to seek care from any qualified provider. But it's not enough

to just point to a violation of a law. And we're talking

sort of generally when you want to go to court. You have to also point to something that gives you

a right to sue. And so the plaintiffs in this case, a private patient and then Planned Parenthood of

South Carolina, were relying on a federal civil rights law known as Section 1983 that allows private lawsuits against state and local officials for the violation of rights under the Constitution or U.S. laws.

And the Supreme Court today, by a vote of six to three, said that the plaintiffs can't rely on this federal civil rights law section 1983,

and therefore their case can't go forward. This was an opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch,

joined by the court's other conservative justices. And he said, particularly when you're

talking about a case like the Medicaid Act, in which Congress gives the state's money,

and in return for getting the money, the states agree to comply with particular conditions that are

outlined in the law. You need to be crystal clear about what the conditions are and the possibility

that states could be sued by private individuals. And in this case, he said

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