Dive Brief:
A group of municipalities and a large labor union sued the HHS last week over the Trump administration’s plan to eliminate more than $11 billion in public health grants.
Municipalities in Texas, Tennessee, Ohio and Missouri, as well as the union AFSCME, argued the cuts would weaken their ability to tackle infectious disease outbreaks like bird flu and the measles, which has spread across 29 states.
The HHS is already facing a lawsuit from 23 states and Washington, D.C., over the grant eliminations. However, a judge earlier this month temporarily suspended the funding cuts to the health programs.
Dive Insight:
Late last month, the Trump administration said it would revoke billions of dollars worth of public health grants awarded during the COVID-19 pandemic, which went to initiatives to support vaccine access, substance use disorder treatment and tracking infectious diseases.
At the time, the administration said the pandemic was over, and the HHS would “no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”
But the latest lawsuit against the HHS, brought by Harris County, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; the metropolitan government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee; Kansas City, Missouri; and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, argues the end of the public health emergency isn’t a lawful basis to cut the funds. The litigation, filed on Thursday in U.S. Disrict Court for the District of Columbia, claims the HHS would have to cut funding for the programs on an individual basis for a specific cause.
The lawsuit added that Congress — which has control over the government’s purse, not the executive branch — didn’t limit the funds to the COVID pandemic or even to programs related to the pandemic. Instead, the union and municipalities said the legislature was motivated to improve the country’s public health infrastructure in the wake of COVID.
Losing the funds jeopardizes some of the municipalities’ health programs, including initiatives for surveilling wastewater to detect emerging infectious diseases and providing vaccines to children, according to the suit. Additionally, AFSCME argued its members have been laid off or moved into new jobs due to the grant cuts.
For example, in Kansas City, grants were used to build up the city’s ability to test for diseases like COVID-19, flu and measles, and screen residents in public housing for common health issues like high blood pressure.
The termination of grants has led to an “immediate disruption” in healthcare services in Nashville and Davidson County, said Wally Dietz, director of law for the metropolitan government of Nashville, in a Thursday statement.
“Metro Nashville joined this lawsuit because the federal government’s unlawful termination of health programs has forced layoffs of Health Department employees, termination of lab testing for infectious disease, including lab tests where the patient is waiting on a result, elimination of programs for childhood vaccination, and more,” he said. “We were on the verge of providing these life saving services to our unhoused population but that initiative is halted in its tracks.”
The HHS told Healthcare Dive it doesn’t comment on ongoing litigation.
