The Trump administration can’t force organizations that receive federal teen pregnancy prevention grants to comply with an executive order against “indoctrinating” children about “radical gender ideology,” a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., an appointee of former President Obama, ruled that a July directive from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was arbitrary and capricious and contradicted the original congressional intent of the grants.
Howell said HHS imposed binding requirements on grant recipients but gave no indication that those requirements “were the product of reasoned decision-making and analysis of evidence.”
Instead, the agency “seemingly relied on irrelevant ideological factors, and did not justify its change in position,” Howell wrote.
