Washington sues to protect funds for reproductive and preventive healthcare from illegal funding conditions
Washington today joined a coalition of 22 other states in suing to block a new federal policy that threatens to strip healthcare funding from states and providers unless they meet a variety of unlawful conditions. The lawsuit challenges new conditions on Title X funds, a program that has existed for more than 50 years and supports cancer screenings, family planning, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, pregnancy testing and counseling, and other critical preventive healthcare for millions of Americans nationwide.
Under the new conditions, healthcare providers would be required to discourage contraception use, tell their patients to get married and have children, and exclude and stigmatize transgender people, or lose Title X funding. The states are asking the court to block these and other unlawful and discriminatory conditions and protect Americans’ access to affordable, high-quality healthcare.
“Healthcare decisions should be made by patients and their clinicians, not politicians,” said Attorney General Nick Brown. “We will fight to maintain these critical funds that provide essential healthcare services to Washingtonians across the state.”
Washington received about $4.3 million in Title X grant funding last year. These funds help serve more than 76,000 Washingtonians through 92 clinics across 32 counties in Washington State.
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 align their programs with a sweeping set of political priorities as a condition of receiving or keeping federal funds. The priorities include eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, excluding and stigmatizing transgender people, discouraging the use of contraception in favor of natural family planning, requiring clinics to counsel all patients toward marriage and parenthood rather than providing neutral, patient-centered guidance, and complying with unrelated political priorities like "ending crime and disorder on America's streets.” Providers who don't comply risk losing their funding altogether.
Brown 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 nondirective 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. Additionally, the coalition argues that the conditions are so vague that providers cannot reasonably determine what compliance requires, in violation of the Constitution's Spending Clause, which limits the government's ability to attach unclear or unrelated strings to federal funding.
The coalition is asking the court to declare the administration’s new political 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 Brown 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, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin, as well as the governors of Pennsylvania and Kentucky.
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Washington’s Attorney General serves the people and the state of Washington. As the state’s largest law firm, the Attorney General’s Office provides legal representation to every state agency, board, and commission in Washington. Additionally, the Office serves the people directly by enforcing consumer protection, civil rights, and environmental protection laws. The Office also prosecutes elder abuse, Medicaid fraud, and handles sexually violent predator cases in 38 of Washington’s 39 counties. Visit www.atg.wa.gov to learn more.
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