A coalition of organizations filed a lawsuit against the Trump-Vance administration over recent cuts to the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP).
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. named as defendants. Plaintiffs include Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), Democracy Forward and the Public Citizen Litigation Group.
The complaint (PDF) comes after two new Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFO) were issued—and then revoked—imposing new criteria for funding awards for the program, according to a July 14 press release.
“Terminating the Teen Pregnancy Prevention grants was reckless. It’s already hurting young people and disrupting proven programs in communities nationwide,” said Callie Simon, SIECUS executive director, in a statement. “We are fighting back because young people deserve medically-accurate, inclusive sex education, not ideological programs that ignore the evidence, violate the law, and put their health and well-being at risk.”
HHS published a public policy notice last June “imposing new substantive conditions” on awardees that were not based on statutory criteria set by Congress, the complaint reads. Last month, according to the complaint, HHS “doubled down” and implemented a new policy rejecting the original TPPP and replaced it with “one divorced from the evidence-based programs funded by the statute.”
The complaint says the NOFOs, issued June 23, conditioned funding on incorporating abstinence-only “sexual risk avoidance” education, requiring attendees to align with agency priorities and restricting discussion on teen sexual activity. On June 26, HHS also terminated the “vast majority of existing” cooperative agreements.
“Defendants abandoned the statutory criteria established by Congress in favor of their own policy priorities, in violation of law,” the lawsuit said. “Defendants relied on factors inconsistent with the statutory criteria, failed to consider important aspects of the problem of reducing teen pregnancy, and changed course without regard for the substantial reliance interests of awardees, program beneficiaries, and the broader public.”
The lawsuit seeks to declare the new policy unlawful, in violation of the 2026 Appropriations Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, to declare the 2026 NOFOs unlawful and more.
Moreover, the White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget request targeted the TPPP and other subagency programs for consolidation or elimination on various grounds, including promotion of radicalized ideologies or duplicates of other federal spending.
For the TPPP, the proposal said it “issues grants to problematic organizations like abortion clinics that waste American taxpayer dollars on abortion services and promote radical leftist ideology.”
The program was a target of the first Trump administration, which led to lawsuits being filed by Democracy Forward, Public Citizen Litigation Group and Planned Parenthood. Ultimately, the courts favored the plaintiffs and funds were restored.
Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement the administration’s “repeated attempts to terminate proven evidence-based programs and spread misinformation to teens have real consequences for young people’s futures.”
“This is a backdoor, ideologically-driven effort disguised as education, defying Congress’s clear directive that these grants support medically accurate, age-appropriate, evidence-based programs,” Perryman said. “An overwhelming majority of Americans believe young people should receive honest, inclusive sexual education. Our team at Democracy Forward is proud to have stopped the first Trump administration’s effort to harmfully alter this essential program in court before, and we will do it again.”