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BALTIMORE, MD – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown today secured a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to gut essential health, education, and social service programs for low-income families. In July, Attorney General Brown joined 20 other attorneys general in challenging the federal government’s reinterpretation of a decades-old law governing access to social services. Today, a federal court granted the coalition’s request for a preliminary injunction, blocking sweeping new rules that threatened to strip funding from programs like Head Start, Title X family planning clinics, food banks, domestic violence shelters, adult education, and community health centers.
“Today's ruling stops the Trump administration from using a person's immigration status to turn away hungry children from food pantries, force abuse survivors out of shelters, and deny healthcare to families that need it most,” said Attorney General Brown. “We won’t let the federal government abandon the most vulnerable Marylanders among us, and we will keep fighting in court until this cruel policy is struck down for good.”
Earlier this summer, four federal agencies – the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Education (ED), Labor (DOL), and Justice (DOJ) – issued a coordinated set of directives abruptly redefining longstanding policy under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). For nearly 30 years, Republican and Democratic administrations alike interpreted PRWORA to allow states to offer vital public health, education, and anti-poverty programs regardless of immigration status. The Trump administration’s sudden reversal would have forced states to impose immigration status verification on countless services, threatening catastrophic funding losses and program closures.
The court’s decision halts implementation of those new directives in the plaintiff states while litigation proceeds, ensuring that millions of families can continue to access critical services without fear of denial or disruption. With this ruling, the judge determined that the administration likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution by issuing sweeping new mandates without lawful rulemaking, misreading PRWORA, and failing to consider the devastating impacts on states and communities.
Joining Attorney General Brown in this lawsuit are the attorneys general of New York, Washington, Rhode Island, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai‛i, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
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