Bill Donohue

Anyone who has been following the ordeal of Father Gordon MacRae, the falsely accused priest who has been imprisoned since 1994, is aware of the injustice he has had to endure. One of the persons who has contributed to this injustice is U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante.

He is back in the news for halting President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship. He has given the president one week to appeal his decision.

To understand why the Catholic League believes this judge is morally delinquent, read the account by Detective Ryan MacDonald on how Laplante put the screws to Father MacRae.

Bill Donohue

July 10, 2025

Black Lives Matter Day is July 13. BLM was founded in 2013 after the death of Trayvon Martin but did not become a national force until 2020. Today it is nothing but a shell of an organization. It not only ripped off corporate donors, its legacy is one of blood.

In July 2020, Patrisse Cullors became BLM’s executive director. Less than a year later she resigned after it was reported that she “used her position as the charity’s leader to funnel business to an art company led by the father of her only child.” Before she left in May 2021, she announced that BLM had raised over $90 million. CharityWatch subsequently said BLM is “a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction.”

It was such a mess that ten states had to close its chapters once it was revealed that BLM was not in compliance with state registration laws. In September 2022, one of its board members, Shalomyah Bowers, and his consulting firm, was accused of stealing more than $10 million in donations from the BLM Global Foundation, using it as its own “piggy bank.”

Bad as this is, nothing is worse than the violence that BLM protesters  engaged in, and the way it exploited black-police encounters. It planted the seed in the minds of millions of Americans that the cops are the enemy of black people, thus aggravating racial relations.

The late David Horowitz closely tracked the damage that BLM had done. “All the outrage against police racism, and all the mayhem fueled by that outrage, was based on no evidence whatsoever. It was based on a lie.” He concluded that the lie “inspired over 600 attacks on 220 American cities.”

To read our report on BLM’s lies and their consequences, click here.

Bill Donohue

July 8, 2025

Catholic dissidents are a motley crew. They include ex-Catholics, Catholics in name only, and some who attend Mass. They are lay men and women, nuns and priests; more than a few are ex-nuns and ex-priests. What they have in common is anger: they are very angry at the Catholic Church. What do they want? They want to gut its moral theology and Protestantize it.

Practicing Catholics do not fund Catholic dissident organizations, so where do they get their cash? From elite foundations bent on undermining Catholicism. There are many of them, but the number-one contributor to these “organizations” (they are more like letterheads with an email address and a website) is the Arcus Foundation.

Arcus funds We Are Church, DignityUSA, New Ways Ministry, Catholics for Choice and the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual. All reject the Church’s teachings on marriage, the family, sexuality and ordination, yet claim to be Catholic.

Jon Stryker created the Arcus Foundation in 2000 to focus on queer causes and the preservation of the great apes. We are not sure how well he has done on the latter goal, but we are certain that he has succeeded in funding anti-Catholicism. A homosexual billionaire, in 2023 he gave a total of more than $42 million in grants and operating expenses to various organizations, some of which are dissident Catholic groups.

We Are Church is an umbrella group of ex-Catholics and Catholic malcontents. It is a member of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, a pro-homosexual outfit. Its leaders have tried very hard to mobilize everyday Catholics to join their efforts to radically change the Church from top to bottom. They have failed repeatedly, but they still try to tear it apart.

New Ways Ministry was founded in 1977 by Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick. Their goal is to normalize homosexuality and to get the Church to change its teachings on sodomy. For decades this outfit has been roundly condemned by cardinals and bishops in Rome and the U.S., but in 2021 Pope Francis spoke positively of Gramick. Indeed, he warmly embraced her.

DignityUSA is another pro-homosexual entity. At one time its New York chaplain was Father Paul Shanley, the Boston child rapist who was thrown out of the priesthood after many clerics covered up for him.

Catholics for Choice is a pro-abortion and anti-Catholic letterhead. Frances Kissling, an ex-nun, succeeded in putting it on the map decades ago. The media love them, and no elite donor has been a steadier supporter of its policies more than the Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation is so ideologically corrupt that Henry Ford II quit in protest in the 1970s.

Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) wants a  woman to be pope, provided it is a woman who rejects the teachings of the Church on sexuality; it will settle for women priests right now.

Other dissident groups that are funded by the establishment include the National Coalition of American Nuns—it is openly pro-abortion—the Women’s Ordination Conference and NETWORK; the latter was run for many years by Sister Simone—Nuns-on-the-Bus—Campbell (the Democratic operative thinks abortion should be legal).

Arcus and the Ford Foundation are not alone in keeping these rogue groups alive. As expected, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations are donors to these anti-Catholic causes, as are the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (Warren is a big abortion fan), the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Huber Foundation.

We know of no organized effort to effectively assault the beliefs and practices of Jews, Muslims or Protestants. Just Catholics.

So while conservatives are rightly happy that there are some needed cultural shifts going on, they would be foolish to think that the enemies of Christianity, especially Catholicism, will go quietly into the night. Termites have a way of hanging around.

Michael P. McDonald

July 7, 2025

Otto von Bismarck once commented that “Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.” This maxim is even more applicable for large-scale bills that have come to dominate the political landscape of Washington in recent years. After all, in all of these bills, there will be things you love, there will be things you can live with, and there will be things you hate. It all really comes down to what you choose to emphasize.

With President Trump’s signature spending bill, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” becoming law, the talking heads have already begun spewing their narrative about this legislation. While we will leave it to the chattering class to cheer and jeer at this bill that Trump has rightfully touted as critical in unleashing America’s potential, there is a major component of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that is of keen interest to the Catholic League: namely, this legislation is the single greatest victory for school choice on the national level.

The bill provides a full tax credit for Americans who donate to third-party scholarship granting organizations. These generous people will be eligible to take off $1,700 from their taxes each year. In turn, these donations will be used as scholarships that families can put towards paying for tuition or other educational expenses.

For the first time in American history, the federal government is providing a real alternative to families plagued by failing public schools that refuse to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic so that they can indoctrinate young minds turning them into woke activists.

Of course, as with every other aspect of these massive spending packages, the school choice provision was subjected to the usual procedural measures and horse trading that impacted its final shape. While the Senate Parliamentarian watered-down the more robust version that allowed for more funding for this critical measure, a bigger concern was the inclusion of an opt-out clause allowing blue states, who need alternatives the most, the option of not participating in the scholarship programs.

While this will lessen the impact of this program, it is a step in the right direction and illustrates that there is always more to do on the critical issue of school choice. For our part, the Catholic League will continue to lead in this critical fight.

As our longtime members will know, when Fr. Virgil C. Blum founded the Catholic League in 1973, school choice was a primary concern of his. After all, a high quality Catholic education is critical to the formation of the next generation of Catholics. It will lead to more people deeply committed to the Church who will spend the rest of their lives ensuring our faith is vigorously represented in the public square.

And the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will bolster Catholic schools across America. This will help struggling families access high quality Catholic education, help in forming faithful Catholics for generations to come, and ensure Catholics have a strong presence in the public square. For all of these reasons, we are bullish about this key provision in Trump’s signature bill.

It truly is one big beautiful win for school choice.

Bill Donohue

July 3, 2025

Fourth of July festivities are loved by most Americans, and this year is no different. There are exceptions, of course, the most noticeable being celebrities, many of whom are more at home condemning America than celebrating it. Too many of them have a hard time flexing their patriotic muscles.

The Hollywood elite are often seen supporting radical anti-American conferences and demonstrations. Today, they are quick to say they don’t hate America, just its president. The distinction is valid, but it still raises serious questions about the extent of their patriotism. For example, those who despised Biden were rarely, if ever, seen cheering, or participating in, events where the American flag was burned. The same is not true of the anti-Trump crowd.

When hatred of the president becomes so extreme that its proponents suggest, or flatly support, violence, they are a threat to our country.

Broadway star Patti LuPone is so angry at Trump that she recently said she wanted to blow up the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Who can forget Kathy Griffin holding a bloody, decapitated Trump head? Marilyn Manson did something similar when he released a video that showed a Trump-like figure decapitated. Mickey Rourke said he would “love 30 seconds in a room” with Trump, and also expressed an interest in smashing him with a baseball bat.

Larry Wilmore said, “I don’t want to give him [Trump] any more oxygen. That’s not a euphemism, by the way. I mean it literally.” Rosie O’Donnell, who has fled the country, opined that it would be great to have a game called, “Push Trump Off a Cliff Again.” Madonna hated Trump so much she told a huge anti-Trump crowd that she had “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”

If the celebrities are not preaching violence, they are sounding the alarm over Trump tearing the country apart.

During the presidential campaign last year, Robert De Niro told the press that Trump “wants to destroy” the world. Stephen King warned how fragile democracy is, saying, “LOVELY TO LOOK AT. DELIGHTFUL TO HOLD, BUT ONCE YOU BREAK IT, THEN IT’S SOLD.”

Mia Farrow, another victim of Trump Derangement Syndrome, recently proclaimed, “If we have 6 months of democracy left i’ll [sic] be surprised. I’m guessing 3-4 months.”

I marked my calendar the day she said that. It was March 4. Well, four months have gone by and we are on the eve of July 4th. If she thinks democracy has crashed, she needs to follow Rosie’s lead and get out of town.

Happy Fourth of July to all those patriotic Americans who love our country, and who are not at war with our president.

We originally ran this story on May 14, 2025. The Catholic League has been out in front on this issue, and we were the first organization in the nation to defend Pope Leo XIV. In light of the New York Times running a similar article today, we are releasing it again. While the Times is mostly fair, we wanted to ensure that Bill Donohue’s extensive work on this topic was readily available to counter any misconceptions that some people might draw from the Times.

Bill Donohue

Few things excite the media more than a juicy sex story about Catholic priests, no matter how half-baked the story is. The latest iteration of this phenomenon came on the day Cardinal Robert Prevost became Pope Leo XIV. Wasting no time claiming he is guilty of covering up priestly sexual abuse was SNAP (Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests).

On May 8, it slammed the new pope for the way he addressed accusations of priestly sexual abuse in the United States and Peru. Indeed, six weeks before he was elected, this totally discredited association of anti-Catholic activists filed a complaint with the Vatican saying that Cardinal Prevost “harmed the vulnerable.” The facts prove otherwise.

In 2000, when Father Prevost was the provincial supervisor in Chicago for the Augustinians, he allowed a suspended homosexual priest who had been accused of sexually abusing minors to reside at a rectory not far from a Catholic school. Father James Ray lived there with other priests and restrictions were placed on him.

Two years later, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the Dallas reforms, new guidelines dealing with clergy sexual abuse. It was then that Ray was removed from the Augustinian residence, as well as from public ministry. He was tossed from the priesthood in 2012.

Now it is legitimate to question the decision to place Ray near a school, but to jump to the conclusion that this was an egregious dereliction of duty is absurd. Had Ray been put up in a hotel in a deserted part of town, Prevost’s critics would say he was left unsupervised.

The more intricate case is the one dealing with three sisters from Peru. SNAP says, “When Prevost was Bishop of Chiclayo, three victims reported to civil authorities in 2022 after there was no movement on their canonical case filed through the diocese.” They claim he “failed to open an investigation, sent inadequate information to Rome, and that the diocese allowed the priest to continue saying mass.”

None of this is true. Here’s what happened.

In April 2022, three sisters made accusations about two priests to church authorities about sexual abuse (inappropriate touching) dating back to 2007 when they were minors. The bishop of Chiclayo was Msgr. Robert Prevost.

Contrary to what SNAP reports, the priest was removed from the parish where he worked and prohibited from exercising his ministerial duties.

Also contrary to what SNAP reports, Prevost met with the women in April 2022 and encouraged them to take their case to civil authorities. Meanwhile he opened a canonical probe. He also offered them psychological help.

In July 2022, Prevost contacted the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith after the investigation was completed. A Vatican probe found that the allegations lacked sufficient evidence to warrant further action. Moreover, the statute of limitations had long expired. In addition, the civil investigation was also dismissed for lack of evidence and because the statute of limitations had expired.

The women weren’t satisfied and registered another complaint. The diocese responded by sending further documentation to the Vatican. (In April 2023, Msgr. Prevost was named Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in Rome.)

In November 2023, Ana Maria Quispe, the oldest of the sisters, contended that both the civil and ecclesiastical courts were wrong. She started a social media campaign to keep her account alive.

The case was then reopened by the Apostolic Administrator in Chiclayo, addressing her complaint. Victims were summoned to meet but Quispe never showed up.

Meanwhile, there was another development happening, one which SNAP is deadly silent on.

In April 2024, after Archbishop José Eguren, a member of an ultra-conservative movement, the Peruvian Sodalitium of Christian Life, was ousted—he was accused of abuse and financial wrongdoing—accusations of a Cardinal Prevost coverup percolated.

To understand why Prevost was being accused, consider the role that Fr. Ricardo Coronado played. In May 2024, Coronado, a canon lawyer, took up the women’s cases. He was associated with this extremist movement and was widely believed to have engaged in corruption, violence and sexual abuse.

In August 2024, the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference issued a public statement saying Coronado could no longer practice canon law. He was accused of having a sexual relationship with a consenting adult.

Off-the-record comments against Coronado continued to surface from Augustinian priests. They maintained that he “despised” Prevost and that he was guilty of “a pattern of sexually inappropriate and aggressive behavior.”

In January 2025, Pope Francis and Cardinal Prevost met with one of the group’s abuse victims. Weeks before he died, the pope dissolved the movement.

Pedro Salinas, a noted Peruvian journalist who knows this issue well, said Prevost played “an extremely important role” in ending it. In fact, he said, “The campaign of disinformation and discrediting Robert Prevost’s career has always come from the source of Robert Prevost, Archbishop Eguren.”

Having written a book on this subject, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, I can say with confidence that the accusations of a coverup by Cardinal Prevost are false. If anything, Pope Leo XIV acted fairly and with dispatch.

Bill Donohue

July 1, 2025

I asked some young staffers if they ever heard of Jimmy Swaggart. As expected, they had not. He was an old-time anti-Catholic bigot who made it big, and then had a major fall from grace. He died July 1. The Pentecostal televangelist was 90. His cousins were Mickey Gilley and Jerry Lee Lewis, two accomplished entertainers.

On August 21, 2006, we received a fax from a man who wrote, “My mother-in-law—a Pentecostal subscribes to this magazine [he sent a copy of ‘The Evangelist’], and this has to be one of the many reasons she thinks her daughter is lost because her daughter, my wife, is now Catholic. Jimmy Swaggart is spreading anti-Catholic articles to his subscribers of the magazine, ‘The Evangelist.’”

The man was right. Swaggart was an inveterate anti-Catholic bigot (he also lashed out at other Protestants and Jews).

In the 1980s, Swaggart said, “I maintain that the Catholic superstructure and organization is not really a Christian organization. Its claims are false.” He constantly bashed the pope, saying he was “the most evil man alive.” In one of his tracts, “A Letter to My Catholic Friends,” he said of his “friends” that they are “poor pitiful individuals who think they have enriched themselves spiritually by kissing the pope’s ring”; he urged them to leave the Church.

Catholics were idolaters. As proof, he said, they participate in “Mary-worship.” Their belief in Purgatory, he argued, “provided the Catholic Church with a very effective means to rake heaping piles of money into its coffers.” The Church was guilty of “greed,” the quest for “political power,” and promoting the “the cult of Peter.”

Swaggart proved to be such an influential bigot that several TV stations, including Boston and Atlanta, dropped his show in the mid-1980s. However, he was still seen in 550 outlets nationwide.

In the end, what finished him was not his anti-Catholicism. He was photographed visiting a prostitute in New Orleans. After an investigation by the Assemblies of God, he went on TV to beg for forgiveness and apologized to his wife. But his apology proved to be insincere: he was later caught with another hooker.

The genre of anti-Catholicism that Swaggart represented is no longer predominant. His theological animus against the Catholic Church has been eclipsed by militant secularists. They are bent on privatizing, if not destroying, Catholicism. Just as mean-spirited, they are much better educated, and are therefore much more dangerous. In fact, they occupy most of the command posts in America, especially those that specialize in the dissemination of ideas (e.g., education, the media and publishing).

Swaggart is history. May his family come to terms with his legacy.

Bill Donohue 

June 30, 2025

The organizers of Heritage of Pride, who are responsible for the Gay Pride Parade in New York City, are playing New York’s finest. They want it both ways: they want the police to protect them from criminals but they don’t allow gay cops to march with them in uniform. Yet they are delighted to have them intervene—complete with guns—when their safety is imperiled.

The media have been mostly quiet about what has been happening in New York City during “Pride Month.”

After the June 29 parade, there was a false report about gunfire during Pride celebrations at Washington Square Park. The panic that ensued led thousands to run for their life. Some shirtless guy unloaded with bear spray, injuring more than 50 people.

A few hours later, two teenage girls were shot near the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, home of the homosexual riots that triggered the gay rights movement in 1969. Both were hospitalized.

On June 22, a guy with a beard and dreadlocks attacked a 22-year-old man near Penn Station around 3:00 a.m.. The offender believed the man was a homosexual, and made plain his anti-gay animus.

On June 16, a man wielding a knife threatened an employee of a gay nightclub and tore down gay pride signs in Greenwich Village. The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force investigated the incident.

On June 15, a Brooklyn worker at a 99-cent store attacked a ballet dancer, spewing anti-gay slurs. The offender was 79 and the victim was 37.

Should the police seek to apprehend the alleged criminals? Or should they tell the gay community to police themselves? After all, if gay cops are excluded from marching in the Gay Pride Parade, why should they risk their lives saving those who hate them?

The police, of course, cannot pick and choose whom to protect, so the question is nonsensical. But the fact remains that gay leaders are the real hypocrites.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who turned out to support gay cops banned from marching, said, “These officers standing behind me who have been pillars of reform in the community for decades have been excluded and told they are not welcome to walk in the uniforms they wear.”

Gay cops have been banned from marching in the parade since 2021; it was put in place after the death of George Floyd, a black man who was subdued by a white police officer. Looking back at this, the riots that took place seem surreal.

Floyd was killed in 2020 in Minneapolis after he resisted arrest following his robbery of a grocery store. He had a criminal record spanning over 20 years. His crimes included drug use, possession of cocaine, trespassing, and firearms violations. In 2009, he pled guilty to attempting to rob a pregnant woman with a gun and sentenced to 5 years in prison. An autopsy revealed he had meth and fentanyl in his system at the time of arrest.

Left-wing activists, both straight and gay, are the most anti-police segment in American society. That they are supported by the likes of Zohran Mamdani, the socialist who won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City last week, proves that their intolerance is stronger than ever. This is an issue that needs to be checked before mayhem ensues.

Bill Donohue

June 27, 2025

The Supreme Court ended its session by rendering three decisions that have the effect, if not the specific intent, of protecting the best interests of parents and children. Those who ascribe to traditional moral values will find much to celebrate.

The Supreme Court ruling upholding the right of South Carolina to withhold funding from Planned Parenthood in its Medicaid program was decided on technical legal grounds, but its ramifications are much broader.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the Medicaid law doesn’t include a “clear and unambiguous notice of an individually enforceable right.” This is significant but what is really important is that the Planned Parenthood game of saying it is not simply an abortion provider is over. The reason this case was brought in the first place had to do with the South Carolina governor deciding that because money is fungible, Planned Parenthood could use Medicaid funds to pay for abortions. With this decision, other states will not follow suit, the net effect being a win for those who want to curb abortion and stop back-door public funding of it.

Many religious parents, in particular, do not want to subject their children to the pro-gay and lesbian agenda, and they certainly object when schools force their children to abide by it. Their rights were affirmed by the high court decision to allow parents to direct their children to opt-out of so-called LGBT-themed books.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said, “We have long recognized the rights of parents to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children. And we have held that those rights are violated by government policies that substantially interfere with the religious development of children.”

Religious parents also objected to those who sought to deny age verification to access pornography. Advances in technology and the rise of the internet have meant that minors have easier access to pornographic websites than in previous years.

The Supreme Court underscored the right of parents to protect their children from pornography. Justice Clarence Thomas said, “The power to require age verification is within a State’s authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content.” Thus, the Texas law that requires age verification was affirmed.

The rights of parents and children are under attack, and this is especially true of the rights of religious parents and children. Those leading the attack are secular militants, the most intolerant of all Americans. The good news is that their morally debased agenda took a serious hit with these three Supreme Court rulings. Alleluia!

Bill Donohue

June 25, 2025

On June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on three outstanding cases that involve restrictions on parental rights, access to pornography and abortion funding. Here is an outline of what these cases are about. In one way or another, they have grave implications for religious liberty.

Mahmoud v. Taylor

In 2022, Montgomery County Schools in Maryland approved the usage of pro-LGBT books as part of their elementary school curriculum. Initially, an opt-out program was implemented for parents who did not want to expose their children to these kinds of books. However, in 2023 the opt-out program was reversed by the school board. As a result, parents of several different religious faiths sued the school district, arguing that the opt-out reversal was a violation of their religious rights; both the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against the parents. The parents petitioned the Supreme Court and it agreed to hear their case.

The question before court is: Does Montgomery County Schools’ refusal to allow an opt-out for LGBT curriculum infringe on the religious rights of parents?

The parents argued that:

• Their children being exposed to LGBT themed books burdens the free exercise of their religion. By exposing children to these types of books in school, it would make it more difficult for parents to raise their children according to the tenets of their religion. In addition, it would also create confusion among students whose parents and teachers are teaching opposite things.
• The School Board showed religious animus against the parents by stating that the parents who opposed the books were xenophobic and showed “ignorance and hate.”
• The Board showed religious bias by removing the opt-out for the books while keeping in place other opt-outs for middle and high school sex education classes.
• The purpose of the books was to influence children towards LGBT issues because the books were part of the English curriculum as opposed to curriculum on sexuality.

Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton

In January 2023, the state of Texas passed H.B. 1181, which would require all websites whose makeup is at least one-third sexually explicit material to install age-verification software in order to access the site. Websites and companies that fail to do so could be subject to fines and lawsuits.

After the law was passed, several adult websites under the umbrella group Free Speech Coalition sued in U.S. District Court seeking to strike down the law. The District Court struck the law down. The state of Texas appealed the ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals and the law was reinstated. In response, Free Speech Coalition petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case.

The question before the court is: Does the Texas law requiring age-verification on porn websites violate the First Amendment rights of users?

Those against the Texas law argue that:

• Age verification harms the privacy of users because it stores a permanent record of their identification. This has the potential to be targeted by hackers.
• By requiring age verification, the government can have access to and track personal information of the intimate and personal life of users.
• The law would discriminate against those who do not have a valid ID.

Those in favor of the Texas law argue that:

• Age verification protects minors, particularly children, from accessing sexually explicit and obscene websites.
• The viewing of pornographic images by minors can cause negative effects to brain development and can also lead to addiction.
• Advances in technology and the rise of the internet have meant that minors have easier access to pornographic websites than in previous years.

Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic

In 2018, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster signed an executive order that prohibited abortion providers from being funded by the state’s Medicaid program. As a result Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which operates in the state, was removed from Medicaid funding. Planned Parenthood, along with a Medicaid beneficiary, sued the state arguing that the executive order violates Medicaid’s “any qualified provider” provision. The provision allows a beneficiary to obtain services from any qualified medical provider. In 2020, a U.S. District Court granted an injunction to Planned Parenthood, allowing it to be covered. In response, South Carolina petitioned the Supreme Court in 2023.

The question before court is: Does Medicaid’s “any qualified provider” provision allow a beneficiary to choose a specific provider?

South Carolina argued that:

• The language in the provision lacks specific language referring to rights. Therefore, it does not guarantee that Medicaid beneficiaries have the right to choose any provider they wish.
• Only the state can decide which providers can be covered under Medicaid rather than the patient.