In her ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Melissa R. Dubose wrote that “the record is completely devoid of any evidence that the Defendants have performed any research on the repercussions of issuing and executing the plans announced in the Communiqué.
A Rhode Island-based federal court has issued a preliminary injunction against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, preventing the Trump administration form continuing to fire government employees and dismantle agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The lawsuit was filed by a coalition of nearly two-dozen state attorneys general, led by prosecutors from Washington, New York, and Rhode Island.
In a statement, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said that the district court’s decision will prevent the mass layoff of Health and Human Services employees.
“This ruling affirms that Secretary Kennedy can’t abruptly and unlawfully cut off crucial, congressionally mandated health services,” said Brown. “That is the very definition of arbitrary and capricious, not to mention cruel to the federal employees performing those essential services in our states, and the millions of residents relying on them.”
In a separate statement, California Attorney General Rob Bonta emphasized that, with an understaffed Department of Health and Human Services, people across the country could find themselves without access to critical medical resources.
“The work of HHS is absolutely critical to the safety and health of millions of Americans. We are pleased the court temporarily halted the Trump Administration’s unlawful dismantling of the agency so that HHS can continue its important work,” Bonta said, adding that the White House has, yet again, overstepped the limits of its constitutionally-defined authority.
“The Trump Administration is not only acting against the best interest of Americans nationwide, but is once again acting beyond its power—the President does not have the power to incapacitate a department that Congress created, nor can it decline to spend funds that were appropriated by Congress for that department,” he said. “We look forward to continuing to make our case in court.”
In her ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Melissa R. Dubose wrote that “the record is completely devoid of any evidence that the Defendants have performed any research on the repercussions of issuing and executing the plans announced in the Communiqué. Without a modicum of evidence to the contrary, the record shows that the Defendants did not consider the ‘substantial harms and reliance interests’ of the States and the devastating consequences that would be felt by the populations served by those critical health programs.”
DuBose further noted that “Congress never meant to confer HHS the power to self-destruct.”
“Consequently, this Court concludes that the Defendants usurped Congressional power to manage the public health appropriations at stake and that the States are likely to succeed on their ‘contrary to law’ claims,” DuBose’s ruling states. “The Court need not go further and decided the Plaintiffs’ additional claims.”
“The Court … rejects the Defendants’ assertions that the States’ injuries ‘are not sufficiently concrete or imminent to establish,’ and that the injury ‘is readily measurable in monetary terms and compensable by final judgment. At the CDC, for example, laboratories have shuttered which has resulted in States seeking out commercial labs for testing,” DuBose wrote.
“This in and of itself is not the problem,” she said. “The problem is that these commercial labs do not have the same mandates as CDC which will impact the States’ ability to compare and track results, potentially leading to outbreaks involving multiple jurisdictions.”
“The Executive Branch does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress,” DuBose wrote. “As Judge Smith in this district court recently warned when presented with the declining depth of civics education in public schools, ‘we may choose to survive as a country by respecting our Constitution, the laws and norms of political and civic behavior, and by educating our children on civics, the rule of law, and what it really means to be an American, and what America means.
“Or we may ignore these things at our and their peril.’”
Sources
Attorney General Bonta Secures Preliminary Injunction Blocking Unlawful Dismantling of HHS
Washington joins states suing to stop dismantling federal Health and Human Services
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