Federal judge blocks Trump admin from defunding graphic sex ed in schools

Earlier this summer, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that 50 organizations would no longer receive grants for the teen pregnancy prevention program (TPP), including Planned Parenthood. A federal judge has now blocked that change, though the organizations won't begin receiving funding again yet.

Key Takeaways:

In June, over 50 organizations, including Planned Parenthood, were informed that they would no longer receive TPP grants due to the inclusion of "sexually explicit" content in their program materials.
Planned Parenthood and other groups have been criticized for including age-inappropriate, graphic sexual content in their sexual education programs.
A federal judge ruled that HHS cannot implement the changes to the program while a lawsuit makes its way through the courts, but the organizations will also not yet see their funding reinstated.

The Backstory:

On June 26, the organizations received a letter informing them of a change to the TPP grant program, with Planned Parenthood and the other organizations accused of using materials that are “medically inaccurate,” “age-inappropriate,” and “sexually explicit." Because of this, they were no longer eligible to receive grants; this equaled a loss of $67 million across the 50+ organizations.

Planned Parenthood, in particular, is known for promoting sexual activity among children, despite claiming to want to prevent teen pregnancy.

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Former Planned Parenthood sex educator Monica Cline wrote in a piece for the Washington Examiner that, after being hired, she was told to assume that “everyone was doing it," and that Planned Parenthood intentionally tried to remove parents from the equation.

“That is why they say, ‘Parents are a barrier to service,’" she said. "Organizations like Planned Parenthood do not aspire for more in our children’s lives. Their answer to happiness and empowerment is to have sex, use a condom, get tested, treated, and have an abortion.”

In Live Action's investigative series on Planned Parenthood’s sex education, disturbing information was revealed about what the abortion organization actually teaches children, including that the motto at Planned Parenthood seems to be sex with no strings attached. Teens are told that they can have sex wherever, whenever, and with whomever — and anything goes, as long as it’s consensual and contracepted.”

The Details:

A lawsuit was filed by the organizations in July, and Judge Christopher Cooper sided partly in favor of the coalition challenging the changes to the program, which include the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, or SIECUS (a group which stridently opposes prenatal education for students and which was founded by a former Planned Parenthood medical director and funded by porn magazine "Playboy" founder Hugh Hefner), a Planned Parenthood chapter serving Iowa and Nebraska, and the governments of Hennepin and King Counties in Minnesota and Washington, respectively.

The judge wrote in his ruling:

"HHS is perfectly entitled to formulate its own views about how to stem teen pregnancy — or even whether it is worth preventing at all — and to pursue policy initiatives consistent with its viewpoint.

But it is not at liberty, under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), to impose conditions on grant recipients that Congress did not intend or that are unreasonable or unexplained. The preliminary record suggests that HHS has done just that."

However, funding is not yet restored. The ruling merely prevents HHS from using the new criteria to give out grants while the lawsuit is being considered, and the judge ordered both the Trump administration and the plaintiffs to arrange a schedule for the next steps in the court process before the month is over.

But for now, he appears set to side with the coalition challenging HHS.

“An educational initiative that counsels teens on how to avoid pregnancy without discussing the realities of unprotected intercourse and its alternatives would seem to defy social reality, common sense, and scientific evidence alike,” he wrote. “Yet HHS seeks to impose these and other unexplained criteria on all TPP grantees moving forward."

If this were indeed all that was being taught, it wouldn't be an issue; however, as Live Action News has shown, the sex education offered by SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, and others isn't simply discussing the "realities of unprotected intercourse and its alternatives."

The Bottom Line:

HHS has the option to appeal the decision before the deadline of September 1.

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