A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida [official website] on Thursday permanently blocked [order, PDF] portions of a Florida law that would stop funding to Planned Parenthood [advocacy website] following Governor Rick Scott’s decision to not pursue further legal action. The judge, Robert Hinkle, had previously enjoined the law [JURIST report] on June 30, and held the law harmed Planned Parenthood “based not on any objection to how the funds are being spent…but solely because the recipients of the funds choose to provide abortions separate and apart from any funding.” The proposed law would have prevented any organization that provides abortions from receiving state or local funding, resulting in a loss of $500,000 according to Planned Parenthood officials. Scott and his lawyers could still potentially appeal the decision.

Abortion in general continues to be a highly controversial subject in the US. A federal court judge in Ohio blocked [JURIST report] similar legislation earlier this month. Last month the Alaska Supreme Court [official website] ruled [JURIST report] that the state’s parental “notification law” requiring doctors to inform the parents of minors seeking an abortion is unconstitutional, and cannot be enforced. Also in July a federal judge placed an injunction [JURIST report] on an Indiana law that would have banned women from seeking abortion procedures when they are based on race, sex, or the potential for or actual diagnosis of a disability in the fetus. Recently the US Supreme Court ruled [opinion, PDF] that a Texas law [HB2 text] imposing certain requirements on abortion clinics and doctors creates an undue burden on access to abortion, and is therefore unconstitutional [JURIST report]. A collection of Texas abortion providers challenged provisions of HB2 requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and requiring abortion clinics to conform to state standards for ambulatory surgical centers on the grounds that such requirements violated the Fourteenth Amendment as interpreted by the Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey [text]. The Indiana statute contained a similar “admitting privilege” provision.