Federal Appeals Court Reinstates Fraud Suit Against Planned Parenthood

A Christian legal group that stepped into a multi-million dollar fraud case against Planned Parenthood affiliates in California is hailing the recent decision by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to reinstate the dismissed lawsuit.

"While this case is by no means over, winning this appeal means we can now get down to the heart of this case: the alleged fraud," commented Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

According to P. Victor Gonzalez, the former PP employee that the ACLJ is representing in the case, PP affiliates in California had marked up the supposed cost of various birth control drugs when seeking government reimbursement, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of overbilling-at taxpayer expense.

Under the federal False Claims Act (FCA), government contractors are forbidden from submitting "false or fraudulent" claims for payment. The FCA also authorizes private individuals to bring suit against the offenders to recover the fraudulently obtained funds, as Gonzalez had done.

Attorneys from the law firm representing PP defendants, however, were able to convince a federal district court to dismiss Gonzalez’s suit on technical jurisdictional grounds, arguing that he was not an “original source” as he learned of the overbilling when he heard about a government audit, among other reasons.

But ACLJ attorneys insist that Gonzalez is a paradigm whistleblower and an “original source” under the FCA.

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