Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect a Feb. 24 order.
A federal judge is allowing a temporary restraining order related to the abrupt removal of health information web pages to expire, though those resources will for now remain as they are as the Trump administration begins a rolling review of their content.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge John Bates ordered the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to roll back and restore several web pages and online public health resources that had been pulled down in January to comply with President Donald Trump's executive order on gender and sex policy. Among these were the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System, HIV data and recruiting underrepresented populations in clinical studies, along with others identified by plaintiff Doctors for America (DFA).
Those pages currently reflect their content as of Jan. 30, though a banner notice placed at the top outlines the administration's view that the material "does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it."
DFA had brought declarations from various doctors outlining concrete examples of how the unavailable health resources impaired their ability to provide timely care.
The temporary restraining order is slated to end on Feb. 25. In an order weighing in on a potential extension penned the prior day, Bates outlined the government's request that they begin "a rolling review" of the pages in question for materials that do not conform with the executive order, but leave those pages as they are now until they identify the appropriate modifications or removals. After that point, the administration would move forward in accordance with statutes.
"The Court concludes that, on the basis of the defendants’ representations that they will maintain the relevant webpages after the expiration of the [temporary restraining order] and will only modify or remove relevant webpages in accordance with applicable laws, the irreparable harm that justified the Court’s first [temporary restraining order] is no longer present," Bates wrote in the order.
The administration said it intends to provide the court with a status report on its rolling review by March 21. Bates also noted in the order that DFA is still able to file a joint motion for preliminary injunction and summary judgment.
Health web page, data blackout brought 'dangerous gap' in needed data, docs say
DFA, a physician advocacy group, filed its lawsuit against federal agencies Tuesday Feb. 4 .
The complaint, filed in the District of Columbia’s federal court by Doctors for America, outlines a “dangerous gap in the scientific data” that health experts use to spot disease outbreaks and better speak with their patients.
It lists the Office of Personnel Management, the CDC, FDA and HHS as defendants.
On Jan. 31, the agencies began scrubbing critical data and pages from their websites that were related to LGBTQIA+ issues to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order to strike “gender ideology” from the federal government. Per a New York Times analysis, more than 8,000 pages were removed in total—including more than 3,000 from the CDC—alongside numerous online data sets.
Though some pages have come back online with a notice that they are being modified to comply with Trump’s order, other pages including those relating to the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System, HIV data and recruiting underrepresented populations in clinical studies remain down as of DFA's filing, per the complaint (PDF).
“For example, DFA members had relied daily on CDC webpages with guidelines on ‘PrEP for the Prevention of HIV Infection in the U.S.’ and ‘U.S. Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use,’” the group wrote in its complaint. “DFA members used those webpages, and other removed pages, to guide how they treat patients, particularly patients with other medical conditions that must be taken into account to safely recommend and prescribe treatment options.”
“Federal public health agencies must reinstate these resources in full to protect our patients,” Reshma Ramachandran, M.D., a member of the board of directors for DFA, said in a release.
DFA—a nonprofit care advocacy group with ties to the Obama campaign’s “Doctors for Obama” that now counts 27,000 physician and medical student members—said in its complaint the agencies’ removals were not preceded by “required notice” and were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with the law.”
The government also failed to give its rationale for the removal of specific web pages or data sets, the DFA’s complaint continued, “and any such justification would fly in the face of the longstanding recognition that the webpages and datasets are essential to the government’s goal of promoting public health.”
DFA asked the court to declare that the agencies had exceeded their authority and violated law and require the agencies to restore the web pages and databases. The group also pushed the court to enjoin the agencies from removing or modifying the materials without providing adequate notice or if “doing so would deny the public timely and equitable access to the agencies’ public information.”
DFA is represented in the case by the Public Citizen Litigation Group, part of the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
“These federal agencies exist to serve the American people by protecting public health,” Zach Shelley, an attorney at the Public Citizen Litigation Group and the case’s lead counsel, said in a release. “Removing this vital information flouts that mandate. Our lawsuit seeks to hold them to their responsibilities to the people of this country.”
Amid the website blackouts and other concerns spurred by a governmentwide communications gag, several groups of researchers and others have worked to scrape and preserve the government’s data.
The administration's concurrent communications freeze had also drawn the ire of medical groups that say vital public health data—such as the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) publication and other agency-prepared data streams—are being withheld.
On Feb. 4, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology released a statement calling for “an immediate and permanent end to the recent gag order” that could harm the response to state-level outbreaks of tuberculosis and measles, avian flu and potential outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg in Africa.
CDC's MMWR has since resumed publication, though public health experts noticed that certain articles that set for publication had been excluded, such as one on feline transmission of avian influenza.