New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday let stand an appeals court ruling shielding the documents of a Planned Parenthood affiliate in New Hampshire from an anti-abortion group’s request under the open records law. As is its custom, the Supreme Court gave no reasons for turning down the appeal in the case.

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, dissented, saying disagreements in the lower courts over the scope of the open records law, the Freedom of Information Act, warranted Supreme Court review.

The case, New Hampshire Right to Life v. Department of Health and Human Services, No. 14-1273, followed New Hampshire’s decision in 2011 to stop awarding money to Planned Parenthood of Northern New England after officials expressed concern that taxpayer funds were being used to subsidize abortions. The group then applied for federal money from the Department of Health and Human Services, submitting various documents in support of its request, including ones on medical standards, fees and personnel policies.

After the request was approved, New Hampshire Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, asked the government for the documents under the open records law.

The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, ruled that the documents were subject to an exemption to the law protecting “trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential.”

Nonprofit groups like Planned Parenthood can possess commercial information, the court said. “All sorts of nonprofits — hospitals, colleges, and even the National Football League — engage in commerce as that term is ordinarily understood,” Judge William J. Kayatta Jr. wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.

The documents concerned commercial information, Judge Kayatta added, even though Planned Parenthood had faced no competition for the federal money it received. “Although Planned Parenthood admittedly did not compete for the federal grant in 2011, it certainly does face actual competitors — community health clinics — in a number of different arenas,” Judge Kayatta wrote.

Casey Mattox, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the anti-abortion group, expressed disappointment with the Supreme Court’s rejection of the case.

“Americans are already being forced to fund Planned Parenthood, which has become the subject of numerous investigations,” he said in a statement. “At the very least, the government must be transparent about this money.”

In dissenting from the Supreme Court’s decision to deny review, Justice Thomas suggested that lower courts had twisted the law’s language, imposing “varying versions of a convoluted test that rests on judicial speculation about whether disclosure will cause competitive harm.”

“The First Circuit’s decision warrants review,” he wrote. “It perpetuates an unsupported interpretation of an important federal statute and further muddies an already amorphous test.”