"This order puts a stop, at least temporarily, to the irrational removal of vital health information from public access," wrote the legal counsel for the plaintiff.
Exterior of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) headquarters is seen in Atlanta, Georgia.
(Photo by Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
Eloise Goldsmith
Feb 11, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
A federal judge has implemented a temporary restraining order forcing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to restore several webpages and datasets that had been previously taken down in response to a White House executive order "defending women from gender ideology extremism."
President Donald Trump's executive order, which asserts that "it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female," was followed up by a memo from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which orders agencies to take down "outward facing media" that "inculcate or promote gender ideology," according to a lawsuit filed in early February by the nonprofit advocacy group Doctors for America (DFA).
In response, the CDC and FDA did remove webpages and datasets, according to the suit.
The legal arm of the watchdog group Public Citizen is serving as the plaintiff's counsel on the lawsuit, which names the OPM, the CDC, the FDA, and the Department of Health and Human Services (of which the CDC and FDA are a part) as defendants.
"DFA and the physicians and medical trainees that constitute its membership rely on webpages and datasets that have been removed in response to OPM's memorandum, including several pages that related to current evidence and guidelines for providing clinical care, guidance documents on FDA's website... and numerous publicly available datasets that inform targeted public health interventions," according to the complaint.
Following OPM's memo, materials pertaining to HIV testing for transgender people, resources supporting LGBTQ+ youth health, and a survey conducted every two years to assess the health behaviors of teens were all taken down, according to The Washington Post.
The lawsuit highlights other resources that went dark, such as a report titled PrEP for the Prevention of HIV Infection in the U.S.: 2021 Guideline Summary.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, ruled Tuesday that the agencies had to restore access to all the materials identified by the plaintiff by the end of the day.
"The judge's order today is an important victory for doctors, patients, and the public health of the whole country," said Zach Shelley, a Public Citizen Litigation Group attorney and lead counsel on the case, in a Tuesday statement. "This order puts a stop, at least temporarily, to the irrational removal of vital health information from public access."
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