Twenty Democratic attorneys general on Monday sued to stop the Trump administration from gutting the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, arguing that Trump’s spending cuts and mass layoffs have unlawfully imperiled certain federal grants and deprived states of federal services they rely on to address public health threats.
“This administration is not streamlining the federal government; they are sabotaging it and all of us,” New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) said in a statement Monday. James is leading the multi-state lawsuit now before a federal court in Rhode Island.
The Trump administration in recent months has dismantled dozens of HHS subagencies, shuttered many regional offices, and shrunk the agency’s workforce by almost 25% to 62,000 full-time employees.
The restructuring has shuttered laboratories run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ended long-running studies and surveys and eliminated entire teams administering key grants, such as home heating and cooling subsidies for low-income people.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argued in a March statement that the changes will improve efficiency.
“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl,” he said. “We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic.”
But Democratic attorneys general argue that the changes are unlawful, arbitrary and threaten states’ ability to access HHS grants, track public health trends, and access vital federal guidance and expertise.
Unable to send infectious disease samples to federal laboratories for testing, the lawsuit says state health officials have instead relied on a New York state-run lab, Wadsworth Center. “Wadsworth Center is responding to the urgent demand as it can; however, it was not built to replace the CDC and it simply could never fill that hole.”
The Trump administration’s mass layoffs have crippled federal efforts to collect and publish data on population health trends such as motor vehicle accidents, tobacco use and mental health challenges, the lawsuit says. That will harm states because state leaders rely on federal data to monitor problems and track progress toward goals such as reducing overdoses.
The Trump administration also has eliminated the team that updates federal poverty guidelines every year. That threatens eligibility calculations for anti-poverty programs funded by the federal government and by states, the lawsuit says.
“With inaccurate or out-of-date federal poverty guidelines, Plaintiff States risk denying benefits to eligible individuals and families or issuing benefits to ineligible individuals and families,” the lawsuit says.