A federal judge in Rhode Island granted a temporary restraining order against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Thursday, barring the agency from freezing COVID-era health grants after a coalition of 23 states and the District of Columbia sued.
Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear joined the multi-state group in his capacity as governor, arguing the federal health department cannot “abruptly and arbitrarily” cut off $11 billion in already appropriated public health funding nationwide. In Kentucky, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services says it would affect $148.8 million in public health grants.
Beshear celebrated the decision on social media, writing, “We’re going to continue fighting to ensure this money keeps helping Kentuckians.”
Kentucky Public Radio reported freezing the grants would delay some childhood vaccine orders and bi-annual vaccine provider re-enrollment and endanger “key vaccination outreach, education and service programs.” The cuts would also impact addiction treatment services, community health workers across the state, and staffing at youth drop-in centers and call centers for the 988 suicide prevention and crisis hotline.
During the Thursday hearing, Judge Mary S. McElroy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island said the lawsuit’s likelihood of success is “extremely strong” as the states clearly articulated the immediate harms of the cuts.
The federal health department has previously said the cuts were justified because the funds were tied to the COVID-19 pandemic, which they said is now over. The government’s pandemic emergency declaration officially expired nearly two years ago. Hundreds of people are still dying every week in the U.S. from COVID-19, but those numbers are far below pandemic highs.
“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 federal health department said in the termination notice.
Leslie Kane, a lawyer for the government, said that the Justice Department was unable to review the thousands of pages the states had submitted in just a couple of days since they filed the lawsuit and asked the judge to give the government more time to respond.
In the court filing, the multistate coalition argued the attempted terminations cover any public health funding “that happened to still have funds appropriated from one of more COVID-19 related laws,” regardless of the program’s purpose. The states argued the cancellation “caused tremendous chaos” and “immediate harm to public health initiatives.”
Beshear previously said he would fight the cancellations because the federal government cannot back out of the grants without cause, which he says they have not provided in the mass terminations.
State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
