The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are being sued again for eliminating $11 billion in grants for disease outbreak prevention programs, this time with a newfound surge in measles cases as the backdrop.
Labor union American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFL-CIO); Harris County, Texas; and the cities of Nashville, Tennessee; Columbus, Ohio; and Kansas City, Missouri are asking the federal judge to vacate the COVID-19-related grant program eliminations and require HHS to follow federal law and its own regulations to continue administering the program permanently.
Terminating these grants has led to layoffs at AFL-CIO and in public health departments across the country and has dealt a “massive blow” in preventing public health outbreaks from spreading, said (PDF) the plaintiffs.
The U.S. currently has 884 confirmed cases of measles, as a new JAMA study by Stanford University researchers warns the country is “on the precipice of disaster” if vaccination rates do not improve. This would result in measles becoming endemic, or consistently present, within 20 years.
During a cabinet meeting, RFK Jr. downplayed the spread of measles. Though he described it as a “top priority” for his department, he’s also pledged widespread changes to vaccine reporting requirements.
Plaintiffs named in the suit used the grants for a variety of purposes including wastewater surveillance, community health worker training, resource navigators, vaccine administration, disease reporting, infant mortality reduction, maternal health, electronic health records system upgrades, mobile health teams and lab equipment purchases.
“Without the [grant] funding, Columbus Public Health cannot upgrade to a modern record-keeping system that allows for providers to easily share critical health and treatment information between different clinics and hospitals,” the lawsuit said.
A federal judge granted an emergency block on the mass grant rescindments for 23 states in a separate lawsuit challenging the grants cuts April 4. The HHS previously sent out termination notices March 24, with public health experts and state attorneys general arguing the cancellations were unlawful and dangerous. Many grants were tied to COVID-19 prevention, while others focused more on future efforts for mental health, substance use abuse, or surveillance and mitigation of infectious diseases broadly.
An HHS spokesperson previously said the department would “no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”
States and local governments received grant funding for these programs though federal legislation such as the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan Act.
The city of Nashville said the nature of the cancellations may threaten the city’s ability to obtain grants in the future. The federal government deemed the terminations “for cause,” despite the cuts occurring unilaterally when awardees were in compliance, but if reporting systems indicate the city was not compliant, they could be “less competitive” for future awards.
“Defendants’ stated reason for the mass termination decision—the claim that the COVID-19 pandemic is ‘over’ and that ‘COVID-related grants and cooperative agreements’ are therefore ‘no longer necessary’—is a policy disagreement with Congress,” the lawsuit reads.
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