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BALTIMORE, MD – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown today co-led a coalition of 21 attorneys general and two governors in suing to block a new federal policy that threatens to strip federal family planning funding from states and providers unless they meet a variety of unlawful conditions.
The lawsuit, filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, challenges new conditions on Title X funds, which support reproductive healthcare, family planning, cancer screenings, and other critical preventive care for millions of Americans nationwide. The new conditions will penalize states and providers that refuse to abandon nondiscrimination protections or conform their Title X programs to the administration’s ideological vision of family planning. The coalition is asking the court to block the unlawful and discriminatory conditions and protect Americans’ access to affordable, high-quality healthcare.
“For decades, federal family planning funding has enabled Maryland to provide tens of thousands of families with care they could not otherwise afford,” said Attorney General Brown. “Cutting off that funding does not merely eliminate a budget line. It means fewer cancer screenings and more preventable diseases going undetected. My Office will not stand by while the federal government puts politics ahead of patients’ health.”
Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated specifically to family planning and related preventive health services. For more than 50 years, Title X has helped millions of low-income patients access contraception, cancer screenings, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, pregnancy testing and counseling, and other preventive healthcare.
In July, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a new funding notice for the next five-year grant cycle that, for the first time, requires applicants to align their programs with a sweeping set of political priorities as a condition of receiving or keeping federal funds. The priorities include eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion practices; excluding and stigmatizing transgender people; discouraging the use of contraception in favor of natural family planning; requiring clinics to counsel all patients toward marriage and parenthood rather than providing neutral, patient-centered guidance; and complying with unrelated political priorities like “ending crime and disorder on America's streets.” Providers who don't comply risk losing their funding altogether.
The Maryland Department of Health (MDH) has participated in the Title X program for more than 50 years and has never been denied a Title X grant. Along with approximately $6.3 million in state funding, about $3.7 million in Title X funds currently support family planning operations of 19 local health departments and four private nonprofits. In State Fiscal Year 2025, providers receiving Title X funding as subrecipients of MDH served 51,561 Marylanders, with more than 60% receiving family planning services at no cost. This funding is critical to public health outcomes in Maryland, including the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections. For example, if MDH does not have access to Title X funding, the Maryland Family Planning Program expects to provide 1,447 fewer Pap smears each year, resulting in 25 high-grade cervical pre-cancers going undetected annually.
Attorney General Brown and the coalition argue that the new HHS conditions conflict with Title X’s governing statute and regulations, which require providers to offer a broad range of contraceptive methods, provide nondirective counseling, and serve all patients, including LGBTQ+ individuals, in an inclusive and nondiscriminatory manner. The coalition also argues that HHS unlawfully imposed the new conditions without the notice-and-comment process required under the Administrative Procedure Act. Additionally, the coalition argues that the conditions are so vague that providers cannot reasonably determine what compliance requires, in violation of the Constitution’s Spending Clause, which limits the government’s ability to attach unclear or unrelated strings to federal funding.
The coalition is asking the court to declare the administration’s new political conditions unlawful, block HHS from enforcing them, and preserve access to Title X funding for state health agencies and other qualified providers under the program’s existing, longstanding rules.
Joining Attorney General Brown in filing this lawsuit, which he co-led with the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts, are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaiʻi, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as the governors of Pennsylvania and Kentucky.
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