(The Center Square) – New York, California and Oregon are leading 12 states suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over allegedly threatening to withhold billions of dollars in grants unless states illegally discriminate against transgender people.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island, is challenging the new conditions that the states’ Democratic attorney generals say are discriminatory.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said the new Health and Human Services policy demands recipients of health, education and research funding “must certify compliance with a presidential executive order that seeks to deny the existence of transgender people and impose rigid, unscientific definitions of sex.”
“This policy uses federal money to interfere with deeply personal medical decisions that belong to patients, families, and their doctors,” Rayfield said in a statement. “Agencies shouldn’t be forced to take care away from people just to keep their funding.”
Besides California, New York and Oregon, states suing the Trump administration are Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Defendants include Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz, director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The Center Square reached out to the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services for comment, but did not get a response by press time.
The plaintiffs say the new policy forces states to discriminate against transgender individuals or lose Health and Human Services grants that fund medical training, research, and the treatment and prevention of diseases.
“These changes to HHS’s grant policy are yet another effort by President Trump to unlawfully and maliciously target transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and gender nonconforming individuals,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “HHS has overstepped its Constitutional authority and ignored proper procedures in an attempt to codify its hateful agenda.”
The states’ lawsuit says Trump can’t change a law by his executive order on gender ideology. The suit accuses the Trump administration of trying to rewrite Title IX, the 1972 federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs or activities that receive federal funding.
“The Gender Conditions reverse previous policies — in effect across multiple federal agencies and administrations, including the first Trump administration — recognizing that federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination, including Title IX, protect against discrimination on the basis of gender identity,” the suit says.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said the Trump administration is trying to force states to choose between their values and vital funding through a “cruel and unjust directive.”
“This policy threatens health care for families, life-saving research, and education programs that help young people thrive in favor of denying the dignity and existence of transgender people,” James said in a statement.
