The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a ruling on Monday instructing a lower court to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of a decades-old state law barring the use of Medicaid dollars for abortion costs.

The 3-2 decision overturns the lower court’s ruling to dismiss the complicated case and upends a 1985 precedent in which the Keystone State’s high court upheld a law preventing the use of Medicaid funds for abortion except in the cases of rape, incest, or saving the life of the mother.

Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers in the commonwealth said the 1982 law unconstitutionally discriminated against poor women and possibly violated their right to an abortion.

Two of the justices on the court concluded that the state’s constitution does establish a right to abortion access, signaling that the court may fully establish the right if the ruling from the lower court is appealed again.

Justice Christine Donohue wrote the majority opinion in the case, saying that abortion rights are “firmly planted in the existing analytical framework of our privacy jurisprudence.”

“The fundamental right of a woman to decide whether to give birth is not subordinate to policy considerations favored by transient legislatures,” Donohue wrote.

Although the five other justices reviewing the case concurred with Donohue’s opinion, three of the group issued dissenting opinions over Donohue’s fundamental rights argument. 

The ruling comes after a hotly contested election for a vacant seat on the Keystone State’s high court in November after former Chief Justice Max Baer, a Democrat, died in October 2022.

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Democratic candidate Daniel McCaffery defeated the anti-abortion rights Republican Carolyn Carluccio with 53% of the vote. The race, which primarily focused on abortion, broke spending records for the position, with campaign costs from both sides totaling in the tens of millions of dollars.

McCaffery was sworn into office on Jan. 11 and did not participate in the decision. Justice Kevin Brobson “did not participate in the consideration or decision of this matter,” according to court documents.