RUST v. SULLIVAN

Legal Principle at Issue

Whether Department of Health and Human Services regulations prohibiting Title X grant recipients from counseling, referring, or advocating for abortion as a method of family planning violated the First and Fifth Amendment rights of health providers and clients.

Action

The Supreme Court allowed the regulation to go into effect, holding the First Amendment is not violated when the government merely chooses to "fund one activity to the exclusion of another" and that the regulation was a reasonable interpretation of the Public Health Service Act.

Facts/Syllabus

Section 1008 of the Public Health Service Act specifies that none of the federal funds appropriated under the Act's Title X for family-planning services "shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning." In 1988, respondent Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan issued new regulations that prohibit Title X projects from engaging in counseling concerning, referrals for, and activities advocating abortion as a method of family planning, and require such projects to maintain an objective integrity and independence from the prohibited abortion activities by the use of separate facilities, personnel, and accounting records. 

Before the regulations could be applied, petitioners — including Title X grantees and doctors who supervise Title X funds — filed suits, which were consolidated, challenging the regulations' facial validity and seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent their implementation. In affirming the District Court's grant of summary judgment to the Secretary, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the regulations were a permissible construction of the statute and consistent with the First and Fifth Amendments.