President Donald Trump, left, speaks as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. listens during a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission Event in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, May 22, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
The Trump administration is unlawfully trying to condition access to Title X family planning funding on strict adherence to its ideological anti-DEI goals, a federal lawsuit filed this week alleges.
The second Trump administration’s efforts to score political victories via funding conditions for disfavored jurisdictions are decidedly nothing new. This time, the government is using “the only federal funding stream dedicated specifically to providing low-income, uninsured, or underinsured individuals” to “achieve its political agenda,” the lawsuit alleges.
The plaintiffs — several states led by New York — take issue with conditions in a recent funding notice including mandates to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, “end support for gender ideology,” and promote “counseling that pushes patients toward parenthood and marriage,” according to their 63-page lawsuit.
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“The [funding notice] embeds the Agency Priorities into every step of the grant cycle,” the lawsuit reads. “It directs applicants to address the Agency Priorities in their project proposals; specifies that these submissions will be judged disproportionately based upon their ability to ‘advance’ the Priorities; and requires prospective recipients to ‘demonstrate ongoing compliance with these priorities’ throughout the duration of any award or face termination of funding.”
Aside from mere objections to the government’s myriad political agendas, the plaintiffs say many of the conditions are “sweeping and often unrelated.” The lawsuit alleges that many of the required conditions will serve to “undermine the program’s purpose” and would “conflict with the governing statute and regulations.”
“The incorporation of the new Challenged Conditions into the 2027 [funding notice] is unlawful several times over,” the lawsuit reads.
To hear the plaintiffs tell it, the efforts “to graft new substantive requirements onto the Title X program” violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) at a very basic, or foundational, level.
“The Agency Priorities were announced through publication of a [funding notice] without any indication of whether and how the priorities had been assessed for consistency with the governing statutory and regulatory frameworks, and without providing notice or an opportunity for public comment that is required for an amendment to the applicable regulations,” the lawsuit continues.
The lawsuit goes on to allege the conditions are also “contrary to law” and in excess of any authority granted to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under a number of relevant laws passed by Congress. The complaint further argues the challenged conditions “are in tension with the Department’s own guidance regarding national standards of care for family planning services providers.”
The heart of the lawsuit centers on APA-based problems, arguing at length the conditions run afoul of the “arbitrary and capricious” standard, a term of art derived from the administrative agency-governing statute — which refers to agency actions that go too far while eschewing formal, mandatory processes.
“[T]he incorporation of the Challenged Conditions is arbitrary and capricious because the Conditions (a) are vague, ambiguous, and contradictory; (b) depart from prior policies without explanation; and (c) lack reasoned consideration by HHS of important aspects of the problem,” the filing goes on.
The filing elaborates on those deeper APA issues:
[T]he Challenged Conditions are so vague as to be meaningless in practical application: for instance, it is wholly unclear what “ending support for gender ideology,” or “contributing to efforts to safeguard life affirming” program delivery mean in the context of Title X family planning services programs … Next, by requiring alignment with the Challenged Conditions, HHS silently departed from its prior Title X policies … Last, HHS failed to consider important aspects of the problem, including reliance interests by Plaintiff States that have structured their states’ family planning programs to comply with existing regulations and evidence-based, peer-reviewed guidance[.]
The plaintiffs say the new conditions threaten to devastate the communities that need Title X family planning funding the most.
“For decades, Plaintiff States have effectively managed Title X programs in their States directly, indirectly through subgrantees and grant recipients, or in both ways,” the lawsuit continues. “These Title X programs, as Congress intended, provide high-quality family planning services to millions of citizens, many of whom live in rural and underserved communities and are among marginalized populations.”
In total, 23 states are suing HHS over the conditions. The plaintiffs are asking a judge to issue a court order that vacates the conditions from the latest funding notice — an explicit form of APA-based relief. The lawsuit also asks a judge to enter an injunction that prohibits the government from “imposing” the conditions.
“We fought to protect Title X during the first Trump administration, and today we are going back to court to defend it again,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “The administration keeps trying to use federal funding to force states to carry out its agenda, and time and again, we have stopped them. They may think the eighth time will be the charm, but New York will keep fighting back.”
The post ‘Sweeping and often unrelated’: States sue Trump admin over latest effort to use funding conditions on family planning programs to ‘achieve its political agenda’ first appeared on Law & Crime.
