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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way on Thursday for South Carolina to strip Planned Parenthood of funding under the Medicaid health insurance program in a ruling that bolsters efforts by Republican-led states to deprive the reproductive healthcare and abortion provider of public money. 

The 6-3 ruling, authored by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, overturned a lower court's decision barring Republican-governed South Carolina from terminating regional affiliate Planned Parenthood South Atlantic's participation in the state's Medicaid program because the organization provides abortions.

The court's conservative justices were in the majority in the ruling and its three liberal justices dissented.

The case centered on whether recipients of Medicaid, a joint federal and state health insurance program for low-income people, may sue to enforce a requirement under U.S. law that they may obtain medical assistance from any qualified and willing provider. 

"Today, the Supreme Court once again sided with politicians who believe they know better than you, who want to block you from seeing your trusted health care provider and making your own healthcare decisions," said Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Alexis McGill Johnson.

Lawmakers are trying to defund Planned Parenthood "as part of their long-term goal to shut down Planned Parenthood and ban abortion nationwide," she added.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, a Republican, welcomed the ruling.

"This is about who runs South Carolina - our elected leaders or out-of-state activists and unelected judges. We're glad the court got it right," Wilson said.

Since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide, a number of Republican-led states have implemented near-total bans or, like South Carolina, prohibitions after six weeks of pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood South Atlantic operates clinics in the South Carolina cities of Charleston and Columbia, where it serves hundreds of Medicaid patients each year, providing physical examinations, screenings for cancer and diabetes, pregnancy testing, contraception and other services.

The Planned Parenthood affiliate and Medicaid patient Julie Edwards sued in 2018 after Republican Governor Henry McMaster ordered South Carolina officials to end the organization's participation in the state Medicaid program by deeming any abortion provider unqualified to provide family planning services.

The plaintiffs sued South Carolina under an 1871 U.S. law that helps people challenge illegal acts by state officials. They said the Medicaid law protects what they called a "deeply personal right" to choose one's doctor. 

The South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom conservative legal group and backed by President Donald Trump's administration, said the disputed Medicaid provision in this case does not meet the "high bar for recognizing private rights." 

In the ruling, Gorsuch agreed with South Carolina, saying that the law did not provide "clear and unambiguous notice of an individually enforceable right." Gorsuch noted that "private enforcement does not always benefit the public, not least because it requires states to divert money and attention away from social services and toward litigation."

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissent joined by the court's two other liberal justices that the ruling "is likely to result in tangible harm to real people. At a minimum, it will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them."

The ruling will strip Medicaid recipients around the country of the ability to decide who treats them at their most vulnerable, Jackson wrote, calling that "a deeply personal freedom."

A federal judge ruled in Planned Parenthood's favor, finding that Medicaid recipients may sue under the 1871 law and that the state's move to defund the organization violated the right of Edwards to freely choose a qualified medical provider. 

In 2024, the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also sided with the plaintiffs. 

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on April 2.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)