23 States Sue Trump Administration Over Family Planning Grants

A coalition of 23 states is suing the Trump administration over conditions imposed for securing funds under a family planning grant program.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on Aug. 27, relates to grants provided under the Title X Family Planning program, the federal grant initiative dedicated solely to providing individuals with family planning and related preventive health services.

The program’s grants are funded by the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Population Affairs (OPA). Title X grants seek to provide low-income, uninsured, and underinsured individuals with family planning services.

The lawsuit focuses on a notice regarding 2027 Title X funding published by OPA on July 9, which the complaint alleges harms the plaintiff.

According to the notice, grant recipients must align their project design and activities with priorities outlined by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH).

Such priorities include ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and practices across OASH programs, reducing overmedicalization in healthcare, and ensuring OASH funds do not benefit illegal immigrants.

OASH will also prioritize programs and funding that do not use taxpayer funds to promote elective abortion. Other priorities include making sure adolescent program materials are age-appropriate, protecting parental rights to direct the religious education of their children, and “ending support for gender ideology, including sex-rejecting procedures for children.”

The incorporation of such conditions into the 2027 funding opportunity notice is “unlawful several times over,” the lawsuit said, while accusing the HHS of attempting to graft new requirements into the Title X program in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

Moreover, these priorities are not authorized by Congress, and their inclusion in the funding opportunity is contrary to law and exceeds HHS’s authority, according to the complaint.

The plaintiff asks the court to vacate various priorities from the 2027 funding notice, including the prioritization of ending DEI policies and ending support for gender ideology.

In the 2027 funding notice, OPA said it intends to make available up to $257 million over up to five years for 90 grant awards.

The 23 states that filed the complaint are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, together with the governors of Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

The lawsuit was filed against HHS, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and other HHS agencies and officials.

The Epoch Times reached out to HHS for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

OASH Priorities

In an Aug. 27 statement, the office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta said that the Trump administration’s policy regarding Title X funding will require grantees to demonstrate ongoing compliance with various priorities, threatening the ability of states and other entities to secure funds.

“Title X is about making family planning and reproductive care accessible to all, but President Trump is trying to use ideologically driven conditions to unravel this historically bipartisan safety net and fashion it into a political bludgeon,” Bonta said in the statement.

According to OASH, it prioritizes removing discriminatory or illegal practices and restoring merit-based opportunities. This includes ending the dissemination of benefits or advantages based on race or ethnicity.

Regarding ending the support for gender ideology, OASH said it prioritizes protecting children from medical interventions such as puberty blockers and surgeries that attempt to reject a child’s sex.

“It is also an OASH priority to ensure OASH programs accurately reflect science, including the biological reality that a person’s sex, as either male or female, is unchangeable and determined by objective biology,” it said.