Federal judge says she will temporarily block billions in health funding cuts to states
A federal judge will temporarily block President Donald Trump’s administration from cutting billions in federal dollars that support COVID-19 initiatives and public health projects throughout the country.
U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy in Rhode Island said Thursday that she plans to grant the court order sought by 23 states, including Illinois, and the District of Columbia.
“They make a case, a strong case, for the fact that they will succeed on the merits, so I’m going to grant the temporary restraining order,” said McElroy, who was appointed by Trump in 2019. McElroy said she would issue a written ruling later.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul was part of the lawsuit.
“Illinois and states across the nation rely on federal grants to provide state public health services that protect our children and residents from serious diseases or health crises,” Attorney General Kwame Raoul said Monday in announcing the suit. “The abrupt termination of this funding that impacts millions of American lives is both callous and unlawful. I am absolutely committed to standing with other state attorneys general to fight the Trump administration’s ludicrous and unlawful actions that threaten the health and safety of Illinois residents.”
Illinois stands to lose $125 million in federal dollars from these cancellations by HHS. Grants support critical state and local public health services, such as vaccines to children, public schools’ ability to share information about communicable diseases, tests for serious diseases like Ebola, laboratory facilities for disease monitoring and public health crises like measles and influenza in children.
Raoul and the coalition warned that the HHS cuts threaten the urgent public health needs of states around the country at a time when emerging disease threats — such as measles and bird flu — are on the rise five years after the beginning of the pandemic from COVID-19.
New York Attorney General Letitia James tweeted about the judge’s decision immediately after the hearing, saying: “We’re going to continue our lawsuit and fight to ensure states can provide the medical services Americans need.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Kane objected to the temporary restraining order in court, but she said she was limited in the argument she could make against it, adding that her office was unable to thoroughly review the thousands of documents under the time limitation.
The states’ lawsuit, filed Tuesday, sought to immediately stop the $11 billion in cuts. It said the loss of money — which was allocated by Congress during the pandemic and mostly used for COVID-related initiatives, as well as for mental health and substance use efforts — will devastate U.S. public health infrastructure, putting states “at greater risk for future pandemics and the spread of otherwise preventable disease and cutting off vital public health services.”
The U.S. Health and Human Services Department has defended the decision, saying that the money was being wasted since the pandemic is over.
State and local public health departments already have laid off people, including nearly 200 employees at the Minnesota Department of Health. North Carolina says it stands to lose about $230 million, and California officials put their potential losses at $1 billion.
The temporary block on chopping health funding is the latest in a series of legal setbacks for the Trump administration, which is facing some 150 lawsuits on issues ranging from immigration to deep financial and job cuts at federal agencies to transgender rights. Federal judges have issued dozens of orders slowing — at least for now — the president’s ambitious conservative agenda.