UPDATE: Victory Against Planned Parenthood Stands

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has issued an order confirming the ACLJs victory reinstating a massive fraud suit against Planned Parenthoods California affiliates.

The former Chief Financial Officer of the Los Angeles affiliate of Planned Parenthood (PP) had filed a whistleblower suit against the PP affiliates alleging tens of millions of dollars in illegal overbilling. A federal district court in California had dismissed the case in 2008 on technical jurisdictional grounds.

ACLJ attorneys, representing the whistleblower on appeal, took the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  A three-judge panel of that appeals court on July 1, 2010, agreed with the ACLJs arguments, reversed the district court decision, and reinstated the lawsuit.  You can read more about that decision here.

PP then requested a rehearing either from the three-judge panel or from the entire Ninth Circuit, arguing that the panel had misapplied federal law. But on August 12, the court of appeals denied both requests for rehearing.

At the same time, the three-judge panel amended its original decision to explain why it rejected PPs arguments, but otherwise left the decision unchanged. No judge on the court asked for further consideration of the case. That means this important victory stands.

Unless Planned Parenthood tries to bring the case to the Supreme Court, the litigation next should return to the trial court for determination of whether Planned Parenthood, in fact, fraudulently overbilled the government.

We will keep you posted on this case.