BREAKING: Federal Judge Stops HHS from Terminating $11B in Public Health Grants

A federal judge on Friday indefinitely prohibited the Department of Health and Human Services from terminating $11 billion in public health grants set aside for states. The money, allocated by Congress during the pandemic, supported COVID-19 initiatives and mental health and substance abuse efforts. A coalition of 23 states and the District of Columbia sued to stop the sudden change, arguing that they had been given no time to prepare for budget shortfalls. Judge McElroy wrote that the federal government’s decision to rescind the money isn’t just an economic loss — “ample evidence” provided by the states shows that it will decimate “key mental health, substance abuse, and other healthcare programs … worsening public health outcomes and placing their residents at risk” The judge’s ruling only applies to those jurisdictions involved in the lawsuit, which together represent more than 185 million Americans, or a little over half of the United States population counted in the last census. The judge wrote that “There is ample evidence to support the States’ position that the Public Health Funding Decision is causing immediate damage to their healthcare programs’

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