On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to issue a writ of certiorari to hear an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to dismiss a key abortion-related case. The writ to dismiss the underlying lawsuit was sought by David Daleiden’s group, the Center for Medical Progress.
The Hill reports:
The Center for Medical Progress had requested the Supreme Court toss out Planned Parenthood’s claims that they committed federal conspiracy and wiretapping violations. Planned Parenthood also claims that the Center for Medical Progress violated California law by fraudulently gaining access to its facilities. …
The Center for Medical Progress, led by activist David Daleiden, had argued it was exercising its First Amendment rights in making the videos. The group also claimed that the Planned Parenthood lawsuit was in violation of California “anti-SLAPP” laws, which prevent strategic legal action aimed at silencing individuals or groups.
The denial of a writ of certiorari confirms that Planned Parenthood’s suit against the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) in the Ninth Circuit will proceed in full. As CBS News states, “Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit alleges that CMP engaged in wire and mail fraud, committed illegal secret recording and trespassing. The pro-abortion rights group is accusing CMP of lying to the IRS and the state of California in order to illegally get tax-exempt status. It also says that CMP set up a fake health care firm and used fake IDs to register at a private medical conferences on reproductive health.”
Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress have attained something closely akin to quasi-celebrity status on the political Right ever since the initial release of their undercover pro-life videos exposing Planned Parenthood. As The Daily Wire reported in January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently confirmed in a footnote that the Center for Medical Progress did not “deceptively edit” its underlying videos. Footnote six of January’s Fifth Circuit opinion in Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas Family Planning and Preventative Health Services, Inc. v. Smith reads:
In fact, the record reflects that [the Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s Office of Inspector General] had submitted a report from a forensic firm concluding that the video was authentic and not deceptively edited. And the plaintiffs did not identify any particular omission or addition in the video footage. Moreover, the district court also suggested that there was no evidence that any of PPGC’s research was federally funded, so the regulations relied on by OIG might be inapplicable. But the record actually establishes that the UTMB study was funded by the National Institute of Health.
And as The Daily Wire noted at the time, in summarizing the key footnote:
In other words, a federal appellate court has weighed in on the veracity of the infamous Center for Medical Progress videos, over which Center for Medical Progress Founder David Daleiden faced criminal charges in both California and Texas (the latter since dropped), and has concluded that the underlying video in question in this litigation was “not deceptively edited.” The ramifications of this finding in the wider abortion debate and, specifically, in the debates over defunding Planned Parenthood, will potentially be huge.
Alas, those “ramifications” do not apparently now include a granted writ of certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss Planned Parenthood’s legal claims against the Center for Medical Progress.