The Trump administration faces a lawsuit over its new rules for federal grants under Title X, a family-planning program that provides money for pregnancy and wellness care, among other things.
The National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association said this month in a Pennsylvania federal lawsuit that 2027’s Notice of Funding Opportunity will harm providers and patients with different political ideologies than President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
When deciding where to dole out federal dollars, HHS and other agencies will now consider whether those submitting grant proposals are meeting three sets of priorities. They include ending DEI practices and ending support for gender ideology.
“The NOFO subverts the integrity of the Title X grant application process and, in so doing, enables Defendants to hijack the Title X program in order to give federal grants to entities that further Defendants’ political agenda instead of fulfilling Congress’s mandate to ‘offer a broad range of acceptable and effective family planning methods and services’ to patients on a voluntary basis,” the lawsuit says.
Last week, HHS announced it canceled 53 of 67 grants for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. A new alignment review for applications skews the traditional criteria of how many patients would be served, the extent to which family-planning services are needed in the area and the ability to make effective use of the grant money.
Title X already requires that grantees demonstrate an ability to “advance health equity,” the lawsuit says, and the new rules are in contradiction with that. The process by which the NOFO became official is challenged in the lawsuit under the Administrative Procedures Act.
“(T)he NOFO’s alignment review scheme and requirement of alignment with certain agency priorities are arbitrary and capricious because they rely on factors Congress did not intend the agency to consider, fail to provide prospective grantees fair notice as to what is required of them, and constitute a reversal of prior agency position without reasoned decision-making,” the suit says.
NFPRHA is a nonprofit member association supporting the work of family-planning providers. Attorneys from Pennsylvania’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit, and the Family Health Council of Central Pennsylvania is a co-plaintiff.
