The Trump administration’s new gag rule on women’s health providers is going to court in a big way. California and a coalition of 20 states plus the District of Columbia filed separate suits against the rule, which prevents family planning providers getting Title X funds if they even so much as provide abortion referrals and is intended to target Planned Parenthood funding in particular.
The Department of Health and Human Services has “exceeded the scope [of] its statutory authority and acted in a manner that is arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with law,” according to California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
Not just Title X providers, but the patients they serve—around a million of them in California—would face hardship: “If existing health care providers are forced to decide whether to provide full and accurate information to patients, or forego federal Title X funding,” Becerra wrote, “numerous providers will have no choice but to sacrifice needed funds, to the detriment of the patients they serve.”
Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia joined the suit being filed on Tuesday in Oregon. Washington state previously announced a legal challenge to the gag rule.