Judge blocks Trump administration move to cut $600 million in HIV funding from states
A federal judge on Thursday blocked a Trump administration order that cut $600 million in federal grant funding for HIV programs in California and three other states, upholding the states’ argument that the move was motivated by disagreements over politically irrelevant state prevention policies.
U.S. District Judge Manish Shah, Obama’s appointee of Illinois, found that California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota were likely to succeed in arguing that President Trump and other administration officials targeted U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funds for termination “on arbitrary, capricious or unconstitutional grounds.”
So while Trump administration officials say the programs were cut because they violated CDC priorities, Shah wrote, other “recent statements” by officials “plausibly suggest that the reason for this order is hostility toward what the federal government calls ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’ or ‘sanctuary cities.’”
Shah found that the states had shown that they would “suffer irreparable harm” from the outages and that the public interest would not be harmed by a temporary halt to the outages, and as a result granted the states a temporary restraining order halting the administration’s operations for 14 days while the case was pending.
While Shah did not have the authority to block a simple grant termination, he did have the authority to halt an administration directive to terminate funding on unconstitutional grounds, Shah wrote.
“Further factual developments are necessary and the government’s only action in question would be termination of grants, which I do not have authority to review,” Shah wrote. “However, as argued, plaintiffs have sufficiently shown that defendants issued internal guidance to terminate public health grants for unlawful reasons and that guidance was mandatory as long as the parties established a record.”
State and local officials said the cuts targeted a range of programs aimed at tracking and reducing outbreaks of HIV and other diseases, including one of California’s main early warning systems for HIV outbreaks. Some were focused on serving the LGBTQ+ community. California Adv. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office said California faces the “largest share” of cuts.
The White House said the cuts were aimed at programs that “promote DEI and radical gender ideology,” while federal health officials said the programs in question did not reflect the CDC’s “priorities.”
Bonta welcomed Shah’s order in a statement, saying he and his fellow attorneys general who filed the lawsuit were “confident that the facts and the law support permanently blocking these reckless and illegal funding cuts.”
