Restored tens of millions to Planned Parenthood

Lawsuit dismissed after Trump admin quietly restored tens of millions to Planned Parenthood

Progressive groups dropped their case against HHS over the withheld family planning funds, but other challenges continue.

By Alice Miranda Ollstein

The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday dropped its lawsuit against the Trump administration over tens of millions in Title X family planning funds that federal officials had withheld from Planned Parenthood and some other health clinics since last spring, after HHS quietly released the money in December.

Though the Trump administration is still defending in court far bigger federal cuts to Planned Parenthood that Congress approved last summer, the release of the Title X funds gives the clinics a crucial lifeline. It is also likely to inflame existing tensions between the administration and anti-abortion conservatives who will rally in Washington later this month for the annual March for Life.

The clinics and the groups representing them argue, however, that the restored funds will not undo all of the harm done over the many months the money was withheld. Though many clinics had been saving their receipts from low-income patients who came in for birth control, testing for sexually transmitted infections and other Title X services and can submit them now for federal reimbursement, dozens of clinics have since shut down and are unlikely to reopen.

“More than 800 service sites were unable to provide Title X services. Hundreds of thousands of patients were unable to get Title X services. So the impact was tremendous,” said Brigitte Amiri, the deputy director at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project who represented the clinics in the case. “So damage certainly was done as a result of their unlawful withholding of the funds.”

Trump administration health officials did not respond to questions about why the funding was restored.

Last March, the administration informed more than a dozen health care providers in the half-century-old Title X family planning program, including nine Planned Parenthood state affiliates, that their funding would be “temporarily withheld” due to “possible violations” of federal civil rights law and President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

One Mississippi provider was cited, for example, for posting a statement in 2020, that it later deleted, saying: “Race, income, geography and/or identity should not determine whether a patient has access to high quality family planning care.”

HHS vowed to investigate whether the 16 grantees that collectively ran more than 800 clinics deployed “widespread practices across hiring, operations, and patient treatment that unavoidably employ race in a negative manner,” or ran programs in a way that “overtly encourages illegal aliens to receive care,” which they deemed “taxpayer subsidization of open borders.”

Over the following months, the impacted clinics provided materials and responses to the Trump administration arguing that they were not in violation of any federal rules, including around so-called diversity, equity and inclusion practices the administration has condemned.

Some had their funding restored over the summer, but others remained under investigation until December, when HHS official Amy Margolis said in a letter to Planned Parenthood affiliates in the Carolinas, the Dakotas, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, and other states where funding had been frozen that they would receive their promised funds dating back to last April, with no explanation given other than a nod to unspecified “clarifications made by, and actions taken by, the grantees.”

The federal district court in Washington heard arguments in the case in August, but was delayed in ruling by the fall’s record-long government shutdown. The court did, however, order the government to put the contested funds in escrow so they didn’t disappear at the end of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.

Then, in a court filing on Dec. 19, shared with POLITICO, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro told the court “the review is completed, and all grants at issue for Plaintiff’s members have been restored.” She provided no further details, but asked the challengers to consider whether “this matter can be voluntarily dismissed in light of the restoration of the remaining grants.”

On Monday, the challengers agreed.

Clare Coleman, the CEO of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which represents most Title X providers and led the lawsuit, said the abrupt turnaround suggested to her that the government “did not have a legitimate case for withholding this money.”

“There was no basis for HHS withholding the grants. They didn’t have anything to stand on,” she said. “We feel like without litigation, the money would be gone.”

The now-dismissed lawsuit is the latest round of legal and political fights over the Title X program. President Donald Trump imposed anti-abortion restrictions on the program during his first term that prompted an exodus of providers. Those rules were rescinded by President Joe Biden, but Coleman and other family planning leaders expect the current Trump administration to reintroduce them at some point during his term.

Additionally, while Congress voted last summer to strip Planned Parenthood of hundreds of millions in federal Medicaid funds, lawmakers would need to pass another law to extend that cut beyond this summer. A top demand of the anti-abortion activists gathering in Washington for the March for Life later this month is permanent defunding.