AG Davenport Challenges Unconstitutional Funding Conditions on Healthcare

– Jennifer Davenport, Attorney General

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S.

Key details

District Court for the District of Maryland, challenges new conditions on Title X funds, which support reproductive healthcare, family planning, cancer screenings, and other critical preventive care for millions of low-income Americans nationwide.

The states are asking the court to block the unlawful and discriminatory conditions and protect Americans’ access to affordable, high-quality healthcare.

We cannot accept that.”

In July, the U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a new funding notice for the next five-year grant cycle that, for the first time, requires applicants to match their programs to a sweeping set of the Trump Administration’s political priorities as a condition of receiving or keeping federal funds.

The priorities include discouraging the use of birth control and contraception; excluding and stigmatizing transgender people; requiring clinics to counsel all patients toward marriage and parenthood rather than providing neutral, patient-centered guidance; and complying with unrelated political priorities.

Healthcare providers who don’t comply with this set of non-medical conditions risk losing their funding altogether.

Attorney General Davenport and the coalition argue that the new HHS conditions conflict with Title X’s governing statute and regulations, which require providers to offer a broad range of contraceptive methods, provide patient-centered counseling, and serve all patients, including LGBTQ+ individuals, in an inclusive and nondiscriminatory manner.

The states also argue that HHS unlawfully imposed the new conditions without the notice-and-comment process required under the Administrative Procedure Act, and that the conditions are so vague that providers cannot reasonably determine what compliance requires.

The coalition is asking the court to declare the administration’s new conditions unlawful, block HHS from enforcing them, and preserve access to Title X funding for state health agencies and other qualified providers under the program’s existing, longstanding rules.

Joining Attorney General Davenport in filing this lawsuit, which was led by the attorneys general of New York, Maryland, and Massachusetts, are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as the governors of Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

What officials said

The most intimate, consequential, healthcare decisions of your life should not be dictated by politics, or by how much money you have in your wallet,” said Attorney General Davenport.

The Trump Administration is illegally intruding into the lives of New Jersey families in ways that will make healthcare even more expensive.

Why it matters to residents

Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated specifically to family planning and related preventive health services.

For more than 50 years, through a neutral, bipartisan, merit-based process, Title X has helped millions of low-income patients access contraception, cancer screenings, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, pregnancy testing and counseling, and other necessary preventive healthcare services

What happens next

The new conditions will penalize states and providers that refuse to abandon nondiscrimination initiatives or conform to the administration’s anti-science and ideological version of family planning.

Legal note: Charges and allegations are accusations. A defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.