Federal Judge Blocks Trump Administration’s New Limits on Teen Pregnancy Prevention Funding

So let me get this straight. The Trump administration looks at a federal program called the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program and says, “Hey, maybe we should steer this toward actually encouraging kids to wait.” Reasonable enough, right? You’d think that’s about as controversial as telling teenagers to eat their vegetables.

Not so fast. Judge Christopher Cooper, sitting in a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., decided Wednesday that the administration’s changes are “likely arbitrary and capricious” and slapped a preliminary injunction on the whole thing. Because apparently wanting to promote abstinence in a program about preventing teen pregnancy is just too darn arbitrary for the federal courts.

Administrative Office of the United States Courts (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s what kills me. Judge Cooper actually wrote in his own opinion that “HHS is perfectly entitled to formulate its own views about how to stem teen pregnancy, or even whether it is worth preventing at all, and to pursue policy initiatives consistent with its viewpoint.” So the judge agrees HHS can have its own policy preferences. He just doesn’t like the way they went about it. Some administrative procedure wasn’t crossed just so. Some T wasn’t dotted to a bureaucrat’s satisfaction. And that’s enough to freeze the whole thing.

Now who ran to court to stop it? Hennepin County, Minnesota. King County, Washington. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland. And something called the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, which I promise you is exactly as much fun as it sounds. These are the folks who think your teenagers need more “evidence-based sex education,” which is bureaucrat-speak for everything abstinence education isn’t. Planned Parenthood, an organization that makes its living performing abortions, is now the champion of preventing teen pregnancy. I’ll let that one sit there by itself.

cottonbro studio / Pexels

Callie Simon, the executive director of that Sexuality Information council, put out a statement celebrating the ruling and complaining about it at the same time. She said communities are “still without the evidence-based programs they relied on.” Bless her heart. The programs she’s talking about have been pushing comprehensive sex ed for years, and teen pregnancy rates have been a moving target the whole time. But sure, let’s keep calling that “evidence-based” and treating abstinence like it’s some wild fringe idea nobody’s tried before.

Here’s the part nobody’s talking about. Judge Cooper didn’t reinstate the terminated grants either. He said there’s “lingering uncertainty over the Court’s power to order such relief.” So the old programs are still cut off, the new policy is frozen, and everybody’s standing around in limbo while the lawyers sort out which federal court should even be hearing this. Both sides have until September 1 to propose a schedule. That’s Washington for “we’ll get around to it.”

Moson81 (BY-SA) via wikimedia

The real story here isn’t about one judge or one grant program. It’s about a system where an administration can’t change direction on a dime without some court somewhere deciding the paperwork wasn’t pretty enough. Congress created this program. A new administration comes in with different priorities, as administrations do, and tries to point it in a new direction. Then a judge says, “Not so fast, you didn’t jump through the right hoops.” The hoops, by the way, are defined by the Administrative Procedure Act, which is the kind of law that exists mainly to give lawyers something to argue about while the rest of us wait.

Teen pregnancy prevention shouldn’t be complicated. Tell kids the truth: waiting works, and nothing else is foolproof. But in Washington, even common sense has to file the right form first.

• Bloomberg Law: Trump’s Teen Pregnancy Grant Funding Limits Paused by Judge