July, 17 2012, 03:50pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Cynde Cerf, Planned Parenthood Arizona, (602) 263-4225, ccerf@ppaz.org
Robyn Shepherd, ACLU, (212) 519-7829 or 549-2666; media@aclu.org
Planned Parenthood Arizona Files Litigation to Protect Access to Preventive Health Care
PHOENIX, Ariz.
At a teleconference today, Bryan Howard, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona, spoke to reporters about the federal court litigation filed yesterday to challenge the legality of House Bill 2800. Signed into law by Governor Brewer on May 5, this bill disqualified Planned Parenthood from being an AHCCCS provider because they provide safe and legal abortions.
The litigation is based on a federal statute that protects Medicaid beneficiaries' freedom to choose the qualified medical provider of their own choosing. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicaid Services have stated repeatedly that states cannot limit a Medicaid beneficiary's ability to choose a family planning provider based on the scope of services provided. A law virtually identical to HB 2800 has been enjoined by a federal court in Indiana, and similar efforts to defund Planned Parenthood have been blocked by federal courts in Kansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
"It is wrong for the state to tell Arizonans who they can and cannot see for their health care. The men and women of this state have the right to see the health care provider they deem is best for them," says Howard. "We are confident that the federal court will agree and grant an injunction to prevent this harmful law from going into effect."
Each year, Planned Parenthood Arizona provides more than 66,000 patient visits, nearly 3,000 of which are Medicaid patients. Three of these patients are also plaintiffs supporting the case.
"I do not know where else I could go if not to Planned Parenthood, and -- between my job and my four kids -- I do not even know if I will have the time to look," said Jane Doe #1 of Yuma. "Planned Parenthood's staff was warm and friendly, and made sure we had privacy to discuss our questions and concerns. Planned Parenthood managed to make my 18-year-old daughter feel comfortable even though this was her first time receiving family planning care."
Last year, Planned Parenthood Arizona provided more than 9,400 pap tests, over 16,200 tests and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases, more than 33,700 breast exams, 136 HPV immunizations, and more than 85,400 contraceptives.
"It is unfortunate that our state and its lawmakers continue to put ideology and politics before the welfare of Arizonans," said Howard. "Women and men who come to Planned Parenthood aren't making a political statement, they are coming to the get the health care they need from the provider they choose."
This law does not affect Planned Parenthood's ability to provide its expert reproductive care to the community. Women and men will be able to continue to receive life-saving cancer screenings, annual reproductive exams, STD testing and treatment, and birth control at all of the organization's health centers across Arizona. We're here for Arizonans. For more information can be found online at www.aclu.org/reproductive-freedom/planned-parenthood-v-betlach.
Planned Parenthood Arizona is being represented in this litigation by attorneys from Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Greenberg Traurig, LLP, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
DOJ Memo Shows Trump Admin Ordered ICE to Conduct Warrantless Home Invasions
"There's no Alien Enemies Act exception to the Fourth Amendment," said one law professor.
Apr 26, 2025
The U.S. Department of Justice dubiously invoked a centuries-old law in directing immigration agents to carry out home invasion searches without warrants, an internal memo revealed.
USA Today—which obtained a copy of the March 14 memo issued by the office of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi—reported Friday that the Trump administration ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to pursue suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua into homes, sometimes without warrants, under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).
The 1798 law has been invoked to deport hundreds of undocumented immigrants—the majority of whom have no criminal records in the United States—many of whom have been sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a notorious super-maximum security prison in El Salvador, regardless of their nationality.
According to the memo:
As much as practicable, officers should follow the proactive procedures above—and have an executed warrant of apprehension and removal—before contacting an alien enemy. However, that will not always be realistic or effective in swiftly identifying and removing alien enemies... An officer may encounter a suspected alien enemy in the natural course of the officer's enforcement activity, such as when apprehending other validated members of Tren de Aragua. Given the dynamic nature of enforcement operations, officers in the field are authorized to apprehend aliens upon a reasonable belief that the alien meets all four requirements to be validated as an alien enemy. This authority includes entering an alien enemy's residence to make an AEA apprehension where circumstances render it impracticable to first obtain a signed notice and warrant of apprehension and removal.
The Trump administration's controversially broad interpretation of the AEA and questionable criteria for targeting immigrants has led to the arrest and wrongful deportation of individuals including makeup artist Andry José Hernández Romero and Kilmar Abrego García, both of whom were sent to CECOT. The Trump administration is defying a U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate Abrego García's return to the United States.
Earlier this month, the ACLU and allied groups sued to block the Trump administration's AEA deportations, arguing that "no one should face the horrifying prospect of lifelong imprisonment without a fair hearing, let alone in another country."
On Friday, U.S. District Judge David Briones ordered ICE to free a Venezuelan couple detained in El Paso under the AEA, finding that the government "has not demonstrated they have any lawful basis to continue detaining" the pair. Briones also warned ICE to not deport anyone else it is holding as an alleged "alien enemy" in West Texas.
Lee Gelernt, the ACLU's lead counsel in cases challenging use of the AEA, told USA Today: "The administration's unprecedented use of a wartime authority during peacetime was bad enough. Now we find out the Justice Department was authorizing officers to ignore the most bedrock principle of the Fourth Amendment by authorizing officers to enter homes without a judicial warrant."
Monique Sherman, an attorney at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, expressed alarm over the DOJ memo.
"The home under all constitutional law is the most sacred place where you have a right to privacy," Sherman told USA Today. "By this standard, spurious allegations of gang affiliation means the government can knock down your door."
As Georgetown University Law Center professor Steve Vladeck
said, "There's no Alien Enemies Act exception to the Fourth Amendment."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Cancer Patient Among 3 American Children Deported by ICE
A Trump-appointed judge ordered a hearing in the case of a 2-year-old girl based on his "strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process."
Apr 26, 2025
Federal immigration authorities deported three U.S. citizen children on Friday—including one with cancer who was reportedly expelled without medication—in a move that critics and one judge appointed by President Donald Trump said was carried out without due process.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) New Orleans field office deported the American children—ages 2, 4, and 7—along with their undocumented mothers, one of whom is pregnant. The ACLU said that both families were held incommunicado following their arrests, and that ICE agents refused or failed to respond to efforts by attorneys and relatives who were trying to contact them.
The ACLU said that one of the children has a rare form of metastatic cancer and was deported without medication or consultation with their treating physician, despite ICE being notified about the child's urgent condition. This follows last month's ICE deportation of a family including a 10-year-old American citizen with brain cancer.
Disappearing mothers and toddlers, denying them access to lawyers, deporting them without due process - this is not what a democracy does to its citizens and families and to their kids.
[image or embed]
— Vanessa Cardenas (@vcardenas.bsky.social) April 25, 2025 at 6:48 PM
According to court documents, the 2-year-old New Orleans native—identified as V.M.L.—was brought by her mother, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela, to a routine immigration appointment in the Louisiana city on Tuesday when they were arrested.
A habeas petition filed on Thursday states that ICE New Orleans Field Office Director Mellissa Harper told V.M.L.'s desperate father on a phone call that he could try to pick the girl up but would likely be arrested, as he is undocumented. The petition argues that Harper was detaining V.M.L. "in order to induce her father to turn himself in to immigration authorities."
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty—a Trump nominee—ordered a May 16 hearing in Monroe, Louisiana based on his "strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process."
"It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen," Doughty wrote, citing relevant case law. "The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her. But the court doesn't know that."
The ACLU argued that ICE's actions "represent a shocking—although increasingly common—abuse of power," adding that the agency "has inflicted harm and jeopardized the lives and health of vulnerable children and a pregnant woman. The cruelty and deliberate denial of legal and medical access are not only unlawful, but inhumane."
When historians reflect on this regime, cruelty will be the word most often used to define it. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/u...
[image or embed]
— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 6:44 AM
Teresa Reyes-Flores of the Southeast Dignity not Detention Coalition said in a statement Friday: "ICE's actions show a blatant violation of due process and basic human rights. The families were disappeared, cut off from their lawyers and loved ones, and rushed to be deported, stripping their parents of the chance to protect their U.S. citizen children."
Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy legal director Homero López Jr. said that "these deplorable actions demonstrate ICE's increasing willingness to violate all protections for immigrants as well as those of their children."
"These types of disappearances are reminiscent of the darkest eras in our country's history and put everyone, regardless of immigration status, at risk," he added.
The Trump administration—whose first-term immigration policies and practices included separating children from their parents and imprisonment in concentration camps—is once again under fire for its anti-immigrant agenda.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently blocked the deportation of undocumented Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and has also ordered the administration to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran man wrongfully deported to a notorious prison in his native country. On Wednesday, a Trump-appointed judge ordered the administration to take action to return another Salvadoran deported to the same prison.
In a scathing ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge David Briones ordered ICE to free a Venezuelan couple dubiously held in El Paso under the Alien Enemies Act, finding that the government "has not demonstrated they have any lawful basis to continue detaining" the pair. Briones also warned ICE to not deport anyone else it is holding as an alleged "alien enemy" in West Texas.
ICE overreach and abuses—which include wrongful detention of U.S. citizens, arrests of green-card holders who defend Palestine, and warrantless home searches—have fueled renewed calls for the agency's defunding.
ICE abducted a man with a learning disability leaving a hospital after a medical emergency asking for help. They didn’t care that he was a U.S. citizen. They just lied and said he wasn’t. This isn’t “border security.” It’s white supremacy. popular.info/p/us-citizen...
[image or embed]
— Melanie D’Arrigo (@darrigomelanie.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 4:38 AM
"A government agency that sequesters and deports vulnerable mothers with their U.S. citizen children without due process must be defunded, not rewarded with an additional $45 billion to continue at taxpayers' expense," Mich P. González, a founding partner of Sanctuary of the South—which provides legal aid to immigrants—said Friday.
"These families were lawfully complying with ICE's orders and for this they suffered cruel and traumatic separation," González added. "If this is what the Trump administration is orchestrating just three months in, we should all be terrified of what the next four years will bring."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Unions Cheer After Judge Halts Trump Order on Federal Workers' Collective Bargaining Rights
"Today's court order is a victory for federal employees, their union rights, and the American people they serve," said the head of the National Treasury Employees Union.
Apr 25, 2025
Labor unions representing federal workers celebrated on Friday after a U.S. district judge blocked President Donald Trump's March executive order intended to strip the collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of government employees.
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) swiftly took action over what union national president Doreen Greenwald called "an attempt to silence the voices of our nation's public servants," filing a lawsuit in in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.
Judge Paul Friedman, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, granted a preliminary injunction on Friday, blocking implementation of the executive order (EO), which aimed to restrict workers' rights under the guise of protecting national security.
CNNreported that during a Wednesday hearing, Friedman questioned "Trump's motive in issuing the order" and "the administration's contention that certain agencies have national security as their primary function, citing the National Institutes of Health, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Department of Agriculture."
Also reporting on the hearing earlier this week, Politicodetailed:
Attorneys representing the NTEU mentioned that the Trump administration, after issuing the EO, immediately sued an NTEU-affiliate union in Kentucky and Texas—federal districts dominated by Republican appointees.
Shortly after Friedman's hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves, who is hearing the government's case in Kentucky, denied a request from a local NTEU chapter to postpone oral arguments that are scheduled for Friday. Reeves is an appointee of President George W. Bush. A decision in those cases could affect the NTEU's lawsuit before Friedman.
Still, the NTEU welcomed Freidman's Friday decision to halt what it called an "anti-union, anti-federal employee executive order" while also preparing for the Trump administration to "quickly appeal."
"Today's court order is a victory for federal employees, their union rights, and the American people they serve," said Greenwald. "The preliminary injunction granted at NTEU's request means the collective bargaining rights of federal employees will remain intact and the administration's illegal agenda to sideline the voices of federal employees and dismantle unions is blocked."
"NTEU will continue to use every tool available to protect federal employees and the valuable services they provide from these hostile attacks on their jobs, their agencies, and their legally protected rights to organize," she pledged.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the nation's largest federal workers union, also applauded Friday's news.
"AFGE congratulates our union siblings at NTEU on their important victory in the D.C. District Court today," said national president Everett Kelley. "This ruling is a major step toward restoring the collective bargaining rights that federal employees are guaranteed under the law."
Kelley added that "AFGE looks forward to arguing our own case against this unlawful executive order in federal court. We are confident that, together, these efforts will secure the full relief federal employees deserve—and send a clear message that no administration is above the law."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular