In summary
The grants targeted help fund public health workforce and disease monitoring. Ending these grants could result in layoffs and worse health outcomes, according to a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Rob Bonta.
California is suing the Trump Administration over its plans to cut $600 million in public health funding from California and three other Democratic states, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Wednesday.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told Congress it would end Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grants in California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota. The attorneys general in those states filed a joint lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Wednesday, arguing the cuts are based on “arbitrary political animus” and would cause irreparable harm.
The grants under threat help fund workforce and data modernization as well as testing and treatment for diseases like HIV.
The cuts target grants provided to state and local health departments as well as universities and providers. According to the complaint, one of the grants at stake is the Public Health Infrastructure Grant, considered the “backbone” of public health nationwide.
California is due $130 million from that grant, according to Bonta’s office; the money pays for more than 400 jobs, including in areas lacking healthcare workers. It also goes to update the state’s ability to send electronic laboratory data and to provide urgent dental care to underserved children, the state claims.
Losing those dollars would cause layoffs and weaken the state’s ability to prepare for public health emergencies, according to the lawsuit.
Another grant under threat, according to the lawsuit, supports planning for extreme heat events.
Other grants at risk include $6 million for Los Angeles County to address health inequities, $1.1 million that could be withdrawn from the Los Angeles County’s National HIV Behavioral Surveillance Project; $876,000 for the Prevention Research Center at USCF to address social isolation among older L.G.B.T.Q. adults; $383,000 for the Los Angeles LGBT Center, and $1.3 million for health staffing at Alameda County.
The U.S. Health and Human Services agency has not said why cuts to the Public Health Infrastructure Grant are happening only in four states, even though the program funds health departments in all 50. An agency spokesperson said only that “these grants are being terminated because they do not reflect agency priorities.”
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, called the agency’s reasoning “a transparent excuse to punish states and communities it disagrees with, at the direct expense of lives and readiness.”
California Democratic U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff called the cancellation of grants “dangerous” and “deliberate.” “The Trump administration’s targeting of blue states is illegal and must end,” he said on X.
The California Department of Public Health and local health departments contacted by CalMatters said that they had not received official notice of the reported cuts. The Los Angeles Department of Public Health said the impact to Angelenos would be long-lasting.
“As local health departments across the nation face simultaneous health emergencies, cancelling federal investments will make our communities less healthy, less safe, and less prosperous,” the department said in an unsigned email.
Los Angeles County anticipates the cuts would undermine its capacity to respond to natural disasters and outbreaks like measles, avian flu and influenza, as well as its work monitoring sexually transmitted diseases and chronic conditions.
This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has targeted public health funding. Last spring, it tried to claw back billions of dollars from states meant to respond to public health threats, including COVID-19. A federal judge in Rhode Island ruled those cuts unlawfu
Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.
