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(CN) — A U.S. judge on Thursday said she would put a temporary hold on the Trump administration’s $11 billion slash to public health funding by granting a temporary restraining order to 23 states challenging the cuts in Rhode Island federal court.
“I’m going to grant the temporary restraining order. I think that the balance of the equities are to maintaining the funding as it is,” U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy, a Donald Trump appointee, said at a virtual court hearing Thursday.
McElroy added that the harm to the plaintiff states would be “clearly irreparable” if she didn’t grant the restraining order and that the states’ likelihood of success on the merits was “extremely strong.”
The hearing spawned from a lawsuit filed Tuesday by state officials from 23 states and the District of Columbia, who are seeking to halt a Department of Health and Human Services order to pull $11.4 billion from public health initiatives.
Congress greenlit the funding in question at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, which is now over, the department claims, rendering the grant money unnecessary.
“The Covid-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago," the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement last week.
But the states say that the funding was also being used to combat other current threats to public health like the measles, which is surging in the United States as vaccination rates have dropped in recent years, and bird flu, which has contributed to soaring egg prices and alarmed scientists by spreading to mammals. Mental health and substance abuse services were also being supported by the funding.
Without the grant cash, the states claim they’ll be forced to lose many of the employees on the front lines of these battles. Minnesota, for example, is expected to be forced to lay off 200 public health employees.
“These include highly skilled professionals, epidemiologists, research scientists that have a lot of skills and training that are not easily replaced,” Sarah Rice, a lawyer for the Rhode Island attorney general’s office, said at the court hearing on Thursday.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha and officials from 22 other states filed the lawsuit in Rhode Island federal court. They claimed the Trump administration provided “no advance notice or warning” before it announced the hefty cuts to public health funding.
“The result of these massive, unexpected funding terminations is serious harm to public health, leaving plaintiff states at greater risk for future pandemics and the spread of otherwise preventable disease and cutting off vital public health services,” the states argue in the 45-page lawsuit.
The other states in the coalition of plaintiffs are Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New York, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Washington, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon and Wisconsin.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is currently embroiled in several legal battles against the Trump administration, celebrated the judge’s intent to rule in their favor.
“We just got a court order to temporarily block Trump’s illegal cuts to billions in vital state health funding,” James said in a statement on Thursday. “We’re going to continue our lawsuit and fight to ensure states can provide the medical services Americans need.”
The Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The department’s attorney in court on Thursday, Leslie Kane, was unable to make a substantive objection against the restraining order given the expedited nature of the case.
Kane is expected to mount a more considerable argument when the states ask for an extension to the restraining order in the form of a preliminary injunction.
The Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are the named defendants in the states’ lawsuit. It is one of dozens of complaints filed against the Trump administration over its unprecedented cuts to federal grant funding.
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