Planned Parenthood chapters across several states have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging new terms that would hinder their continued participation in a long-standing program aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notified recipients of national Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP) funds on March 31 that to continue in the program they must show they are in “alignment with current Presidential Executive Orders,” according to the lawsuit.
President Trump has signed more than 140 executive orders since taking office in January, touching on a range of issues.
The department, which is named in the suit along with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., didn’t immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment on the lawsuit.
According to the five Planned Parenthood chapters that filed the lawsuit, the news came two years into their existing five-year agreements to operate teen pregnancy programs that by law must follow evidence-based models deemed “proven effective in reducing unintended teen pregnancy or impacting associated sexual risk behaviors and consequences.”
All recipients are required to submit yearly continuation applications, which were due April 15 this year.
“Critically, this Notice failed to provide specifics as to how to ‘align’ TPP Programs, which require fidelity to existing evidence-based programming, with Executive Orders that are wholly inapplicable or conflict with the purpose and historical statutory mandates of the program,” they argue in their lawsuit.
“The new requirements are impossibly vague, and to the extent they impose discernable standards at all, those standards would require funding recipients to violate the basic statutory requirements of the TPP program,” the suit adds.
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