A Texas lawsuit is aiming to require Planned Parenthood to return millions of dollars in Medicaid payments for health services and even more money in fines.

A hearing was set for Tuesday in front of U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk as the state seeks to recoup at least $17 million from nation's largest abortion provider, according to The Associated Press. Earlier this year, Kacsmaryk invalidated FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.

The case against Planned Parenthood does not center around abortion, which has been banned in Texas with exceptions for risk to the mother's life since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

Planned Parenthood claims the lawsuit is a new effort to weaken the organization after years of laws from Republicans that pulled funding and restricted how its clinics operate.

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The organization received money for health services before it was removed from Texas' Medicaid program in 2021. The state had started attempting to remove Planned Parenthood four years earlier and now seeks repayment for services billed during that time.

"This baseless case is an active effort to shut down Planned Parenthood health centers," Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Alexis McGill Johnson said.

Texas filed the lawsuit under the federal False Claims Act, which allows fines for every alleged improper payment. According to Planned Parenthood, this could result in a judgment in excess of $1 billion.

The lawsuit was brought last year by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is temporarily suspended from office as he awaits an impeachment trial next month over allegations of bribery and abuse of office.

Last year, Paxton said it was "unthinkable that Planned Parenthood would continue to take advantage of funding knowing they were not entitled to keep it."

Planned Parenthood has roughly three dozen clinics in Texas, but one closed following the historic SCOTUS ruling that allowed states to make their own laws regarding abortion access.

Former federal prosecutor Jacob Elberg, who specialized in health care fraud, said he believes Texas' case is weak, adding that the federal False Claims Act is the state's most powerful tool against health fraud.

Other cases involving this law in recent years were brought against a health records company in Florida, which paid $45 million to resolve allegations of improperly generating sales, and a Montana health clinic that submitted false asbestos claims.

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Elberg, now the faculty director at Seton Hall Law School's Center for Health & Pharmaceutical Law, said it is difficult to understand how Planned Parenthood was knowingly filing false claims while it was in court fighting to stay in the program and Texas was still paying the reimbursements.

"This just isn't what the False Claims Act is supposed to be about," Elberg said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

After U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss was named special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Fox News the change-in-venue from Delaware to Los Angeles may be more important than it seems.

Attorney General Merrick Garland named Weiss, a Trump appointee held over by President Biden to eschew concerns of conflict-of-interest, special counsel in the first son's case last week.

Dershowitz noted the announcement was accompanied by a change-in-venue from the District of Delaware to the Central District of California, where Hunter Biden lives when he is not at his father's home in Greenville, Del.

""This is possibly a big deal. It's not just a technical change because they've dropped the current indictment, and they've vitiated the plea bargain, which I predicted they would," Dershowitz said Sunday on "Life, Liberty & Levin" of the appointment of Weiss as special counsel.

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"I said right from the beginning, this plea bargain is not going to last. And now they're moving the case to the Central District of California. That means that the special counsel probably found something: maybe a smoking gun, maybe just a gun."

Dershowitz told "Life, Liberty & Levin" there had to have been some new information or determination in the case that led it to be moved across the country.

Host Mark Levin further noted however, that it is unusual and potentially legally murky to allow Weiss to continue serving as a federal prosecutor while also being named special counsel.

"People have said that now they can use this to prevent [Kentucky Rep. James] Comer from conducting his investigation," he said, "Under the government rules you're not allowed to be both, but government rules are out the window these days."

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Levin argued neither Garland nor Weiss should be able to use the new special counsel assignment as a basis to substantively change Congress' oversight ability.

In a recent Fox News Opinion column, legal analyst Gregg Jarrett cited federal regulation 28 CFR 600.3, which states a special counsel shall be selected from outside the United States government. Jarrett argued in the column that Weiss' new appointment is therefore a "farce."

Recent special counsels and independent counsels have indeed come from outside government, as Robert Hur, the prosecutor investigating President Biden's alleged mishandling of classified documents, hasn't been the U.S. attorney in Baltimore since 2021, John Durham and Robert Mueller – of the Russia probes – were no longer Connecticut's U.S. attorney or FBI director, respectively, and about a year had lapsed between Ken Starr's stint as U.S. solicitor general and Whitewater-Lewinsky independent counsel.

Dershowitz further said the change in Hunter Biden's case is a constitutional issue that rightly concerns separation of powers and governmental checks-and-balances, especially pertaining to whether Congress can continue to have the same high level of oversight if Hunter Biden is now subject to special counsel investigation.

He said the fact the feds say they are conducting an investigation is notable, but not "determinative" as to Congress' prescribed abilities.

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"Congress can demand issue subpoenas, hold people in contempt. If they refuse to answer, then the courts will have to decide," he said.

In a statement following Weiss' new appointment, Comer accused Garland of committing another "attempt [at] a Biden family coverup in light of the House Oversight Committee's mounting evidence of President Joe Biden’s role in his family’s schemes selling ‘the brand’ for millions of dollars to foreign nationals."

Former President Donald Trump, himself under special counsel investigations overseen by former Obama Justice Department Integrity Section chief Jack Smith, has pushed back on citations of Weiss as a "Trump appointee" – arguing the prosecutor can mostly thank the First State's two Democratic senators for his job.

In July, Trump called Weiss a "coward" and "a smaller version of Bill Barr," adding that Sens. Chris Coons and Tom Carper, D-Del., "got to choose and/or approve him." 

U.S. attorney nominations are by-law made by the president with the "advice and consent" of the U.S. Senate. Coons and Carper, through the blue-slip tradition, gave the Republican prosecutor their blessing.

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