Sixteen states and the District of Columbia are suing the current administration over its threats to revoke funding for sexual education programs that acknowledge trans and nonbinary gender identities.
Led by Minnesota, Washington, and Oregon, the lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims that the administration has violated federal law and is encroaching on Congress’s spending authority.
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The states are concerned with the Title V Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) program and the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), the latter of which supports states in teaching about both contraception and abstinence and focuses on places with high teen birth rates, as well as on kids who are homeless or in foster care.
The administration has threatened to defund the programs in states that refuse to remove all references to trans identities from the curricula. The lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff states will lose at least $35 million in funding if the government follows through on its threats.
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“Suddenly forcing Plaintiff States to remove medically supported, complete, and culturally appropriate content in the materials for PREP and SRAE is contrary to the laws that Congress adopted and is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act,” the lawsuit states.
It said the programs are “at odds” with the administration’s “insistence that sex is absolute, fixed, and binary, and that any reference to transgender or gender-diverse identity must be erased altogether.”
It also accused the federal government of forcing states to “erase entire categories of students,” creating an “untenable situation” in which officials are forced “to choose between losing federal funding for essential public health education programs or complying with unlawful funding conditions that undermine the central purpose of these programs and conflict with state and federal laws.”
In addition to the three states leading the charge, others in the lawsuit include Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.
HHS has already revoked $12 million in PREP funds from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), stating that its “funded [PREP] programs and services include gender ideology, which is outside the scope of the statute.” California officials refused to remove the course material on gender identity after an initial request from HHS, which led to the cancellation of its grant.
In August, HHS sent a letter threatening the PREP program in 46 states, saying it had put the states “on notice” to remove all references to trans people and gender identity. The department said in a press release that its action reflected the administration’s “ongoing commitment to protecting children from attempts to indoctrinate them with delusional ideology.”
“Federal funds will not be used to poison the minds of the next generation or advance dangerous ideological agendas,” acting ACF Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison said in the release. He added that the administration “will ensure that PREP reflects the intent of Congress, not the priorities of the left.”
HHS claimed that “gender ideology” is “irrelevant to teaching abstinence and contraception and unrelated to any of the adult preparation subjects” that the PREP grant covers. Yet, gender identity plays a role in many of the subjects involved in PREP’s subject fields, including “adolescent development,” “parent-child communication,” “healthy relationships,” and other topics.
The current administration has sought to eradicate trans people entirely from public and civic life by threatening to end all government acknowledgment of trans people’s gender identities. This crusade includes the denial of federal funding and the initiation of retaliatory persecution against any institutions with trans-inclusive policies.
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