It shocked me to hear that HHS restored funding to Planned Parenthood, causing the ACLU to drop its lawsuit against the Trump administration.
The ACLU sued the administration in April after HHS paused $27.5 million in funding.
“When the Trump administration withheld critical Title X family planning funding, it blatantly violated federal law and left hundreds of sites unable to provide Title X-funded services,” said Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the Reproductive Freedom Project at the ACLU. “Fortunately, those Title X grants have been restored to NFPRHA’s members. But we know that the Trump administration will continue to attack reproductive freedom, and the ACLU will be ready to use every lever we have to fight those attacks and defend the Title X program.”
Title X is a federal grant program dedicated to family planning.
So why would HHS do this?
The Daily Signal discovered one possible reason: a code needs to be amended:
But the agency may have had no choice but to restore funding, according to Tom McClusky, a veteran pro-life operative and director of government affairs at CatholicVote.The agency withheld the funds before amending 42 U.S. Code Part 300, a rule which governs family planning grants.“They were virtually certain to lose the lawsuit, forcing them to repay the full amount plus interest and cover attorneys’ fees,” McClusky told The Daily Signal.“Even worse, continuing the litigation would have entangled any future funding cuts—which are highly likely under the new regulations—in prolonged court battles before an unsympathetic judge.”
McClusky said the administration wouldn’t be in this pickle if it had just restored the Protect Life Rule.
The Protect Life Rule forbade clinics receiving Title X funds from referring patients for abortions.
Of course, the Biden administration squashed that rule.
A former senior Trump official told the publication that the decision put the Trump administration in a better position to defund Planned Parenthood:
“HHS was caught in a tough spot because the judge was almost certainly going to rule against them and they would have had to restore the funding under Biden era rules, possibly with interest and attorneys fees on top for Planned Parenthood,” the former official said.“With the case dismissed, the administration has far greater ability to cut Planned Parenthood funds under Trump era rules and that will be the true test of the president’s promise to end taxpayer funding of the abortion industry.”
Ethics and Public Policy Center family policy scholar Patrick Brown believes Planned Parenthood would have had a stronger case if HHS hadn’t restored the funding: “Planned Parenthood would have had a much stronger legal case. And the concern there is, not only would they win this one, but it could make future litigation harder to win.”
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