The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) must rescind changes it imposed to teen pregnancy prevention programs, a federal judge ruled on Oct. 7.
Updated conditions for organizations carrying out the programs, which cited executive orders from President Donald Trump, were so vague that the organizations could not know how to comply, Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in a 65-page decision.
“The Policy Notice mandates compliance now, without providing plaintiffs with any meaningful standard for achieving that compliance,” Howell said.
She ordered HHS to vacate the notice laying out the updated conditions for grant recipients.
An HHS spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the department would not comment on litigation. The spokesperson pointed to the news release for the policy, which states in part that the update “safeguards the rights of parents to protect their children from content that undermines their religious beliefs.”
Under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, created by Congress in 2009, HHS provides money to organizations to carry out “medically accurate and age appropriate programs that reduce teen pregnancy.” Most of the funds go to programs that “have been proven effective through rigorous evaluation to reduce teenage pregnancy, behavioral risk factors underlying teenage pregnancy, or other associated risk factors.”
The notice, dated July 1, informs grant recipients that they must, in materials and activities, convey “medically accurate” and “age appropriate” information that reduces teen pregnancy. It states that recipients must revise their projects to align with Trump’s executive orders, including one stating that the Trump administration “will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”
The law funding teenage pregnancy prevention efforts “does not require, support, or authorize teaching minors about such content, including the radical ideological claim that boys can identify as girls and vice versa,” the HHS notice reads.
It also states that the projects should not include content “that encourages, normalizes, or promotes sexual activity for minors.”
Programs that are not brought into alignment with the orders could lose funding, according to the document.
Three Planned Parenthood affiliates that receive funding for such programs sued over the notice, alleging that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act in part because it was too vague.
“The Policy Notice imposes a series of content mandates that lack clear standards and thereby invite arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement,” they stated in a motion for summary judgment, or a final order.
Howell agreed, finding that the notice “provides no way for plaintiffs to ascertain their compliance” with the updated conditions.
She also said the notice violates the act’s requirement that policies not be arbitrary and capricious because HHS did not provide any analysis, studies, or reports demonstrating that the new requirements are logical or that they support the goals of the pregnancy prevention program as laid out by Congress.
“This conclusion is reinforced by certain of the July Policy Notice’s directives, such as the exclusion of teaching involving ‘the radical ideological claim that boys can identify as girls and vice versa’ and ‘information that denies the biological reality of sex or otherwise fails to distinguish appropriately between males and females,’ which appear incongruous with the reduction of teen pregnancy,” Howell wrote.
“This is because, while ambiguous, those statements appear to reject the existence of intersex and transgender individuals, which would be not only scientifically false (and thus contrary to the statutory requirement of ‘medically accurate’ programming) but also would seem to inhibit—or at least not advance—the goal of reducing unwanted teen pregnancies.”
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