Planned Parenthood affiliates file lawsuit challenging Trump Administration requirements

WASHINGTON D.C. – On Thursday, Planned Parenthood California Central Coast joined four other regional Planned Parenthood affiliates in a lawsuit challenging new requirements from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Planned Parenthood California Central Coast is a not-for-profit corporation that provides reproductive healthcare through six centers across the local region.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenges new requirements that the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program managed by the groups, "alignment with current Presidential Executive Orders".

The 15-year-old Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program provides teens and young adults evidence-based information and age-appropriate support to improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes, promote positive development and empowerment, and advance health equity for young people, families, and the community explained Planned Parenthood California Central Coast.

"Young people need medically accurate information about their bodies — our most basic freedoms start from knowledge," read a joint statement from all five Planned Parenthood affiliates listed as plaintiffs in Thursday's lawsuit. "We must equip young people to make the best decisions for their lives and their futures. That starts with this program. That’s why we’re taking the Trump administration to court and fighting to ensure teens can get what they need to live healthy lives."

Planned Parenthood California Central Coast was awarded a five-year, $3.9 million grant for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program in 2023, but most grantees are required to submit annual continuation applications detailed the lawsuit.

The new requirements from the Department of Health and Human Services are specific to Tier 1 programs which compromise about 75 percent of Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs nationwide and are required under federal law to implement, "medically accurate and age appropriate programs to reduce teen pregnancy".

"Defendants [the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy] now seek to impose on these projects new requirements, unrelated to program efficacy, which are at best impossibly vague and at worst undermine the very principles that undergird the program and conflict with historical congressional mandates," stated the lawsuit. "If these new requirements are not vacated and enjoined, Plaintiffs will be forced out of the program, disrupting years of progress for this public health initiative. As a result, vulnerable communities will go without critical public health programming designed to reduce and prevent unintended teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and associated adverse health, education, and social outcomes."

According to the lawsuit, those annual applications were due by April 15, 2025, but the new Department of Health and Human Services requirements were issued via email on March 31, 2025 and, "are deeply inconsistent with the rigorous, evidence-based TPP [Teen Pregnancy Prevention] Program".

Executive Orders cited in the lawsuit as contrary to existing program parameters include:

• Executive Order 14168: Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government
• Executive Order 14190: Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling
• Executive Order 14187: Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation
• Executive Order 14151: Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing
• Executive Order 14173: Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity

According to the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood California Central Coast's school-specific programs -including IN-Clued, Linking Families and Teens, and Plan A- are required under the California Health Youth Act to provide comprehensive sexual education that is, "inclusive of all sexual orientations, gender identity and expression".

"The new Executive Order alignment requirements subvert the very purpose of the TPP Program," argued the lawsuit. "They seek to insert eleventh-hour requirements into long-standing, rigorously evaluated, evidence-based programs, which the grantees, by Congressional design, have little latitude to modify. In many cases, the Executive Order requirements appear to directly contradict the content in the evidence-based programs; would seem to require program facilitators to avoid certain words or concepts; require modifying program materials in a manner that would undermine their scientific accuracy and effectiveness; would necessitate skipping entire chapters or modules in the curriculum; and go against the stated mission (and statutory requirements) of the Program itself. The new requirements are impossibly vague, and to the extent they impose discernable standards at all, those standards would require funding recipients to violate the basic statutory requirements of the TPP program. As a result, funding recipients cannot comply with the terms governing their awards – which require fidelity to the evidence-based programs – and cannot fulfill the program’s mandate from Congress: to implement “medically accurate” programs that “replicat[e] programs that have been proven effective through rigorous evaluation to reduce teenage pregnancy, behavioral risk factors underlying teenage pregnancy, or other associated risk factors."

Planned Parenthood California Central Coast submitted a Year Three Non-Competing Continuation Application on April 15, 2025, that is projected to reach 2,900 individual youths, caregivers, and health care professionals by the end of Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program's five-year grant period noted the lawsuit.