A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the nation’s premier health agencies to restore online access to several websites that monitor HIV, health risks for youths and assisted reproductive technologies, which were abruptly taken offline to ensure they complied with Trump’s recent executive order on gender.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates granted a temporary restraining order requested by the nonprofit advocacy group Doctors for America, directing the administration to bring back public information maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) while a lawsuit challenging the administration’s decision to remove it is pending.
“By removing long relied upon medical resources without explanation, it is likely that … each agency failed to ‘examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action,’” Bates wrote in an opinion issued Tuesday, finding that the health agencies probably violated federal law in taking down the scientific data.
The ruling is the latest in a string of losses in court for the new administration. Federal judges across the country have temporarily blocked Trump’s moves to freeze federal spending authorized by Congress, ban birthright citizenship, alter Treasury payment records and offer buyouts to thousands of federal workers, pausing a rapid-fire series of executive orders and agency moves.
About a dozen public health websites, some of which had been online since the 1990s, were pulled from the internet late last month after Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to recognize only male and female genders and the Office of Personnel Management issued a memorandum saying agency heads should “end all agency programs that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology.” A Justice Department attorney representing the health agencies said they needed to review the sites’ content for compliance with the order.
Doctors for America, whose members practice medicine in all 50 states, said the removals went beyond the terms of Trump’s executive order and have left the public exposed to a broad swath of health risks. Zachary R. Shelley, an attorney for the group, described it in a court hearing Monday as “a major health care nightmare.”
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates granted a temporary restraining order requested by the nonprofit advocacy group Doctors for America, directing the administration to bring back public information maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) while a lawsuit challenging the administration’s decision to remove it is pending.
“By removing long relied upon medical resources without explanation, it is likely that … each agency failed to ‘examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action,’” Bates wrote in an opinion issued Tuesday, finding that the health agencies probably violated federal law in taking down the scientific data.
The ruling is the latest in a string of losses in court for the new administration. Federal judges across the country have temporarily blocked Trump’s moves to freeze federal spending authorized by Congress, ban birthright citizenship, alter Treasury payment records and offer buyouts to thousands of federal workers, pausing a rapid-fire series of executive orders and agency moves.
About a dozen public health websites, some of which had been online since the 1990s, were pulled from the internet late last month after Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to recognize only male and female genders and the Office of Personnel Management issued a memorandum saying agency heads should “end all agency programs that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology.” A Justice Department attorney representing the health agencies said they needed to review the sites’ content for compliance with the order.
Doctors for America, whose members practice medicine in all 50 states, said the removals went beyond the terms of Trump’s executive order and have left the public exposed to a broad swath of health risks. Zachary R. Shelley, an attorney for the group, described it in a court hearing Monday as “a major health care nightmare.”
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