In a sweeping act of resistance, 19 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia have launched a federal lawsuit aimed at halting a Trump administration blitz that’s left the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services gutted and gasping.
The lawsuit, filed in a Rhode Island federal court, comes in response to a stunning overhaul announced in March by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. The move slashed 10,000 employees, shut down entire agencies, and collapsed nearly 30 divisions into half that number. Half of HHS’s regional offices are being shuttered. Thousands of workers—many from the CDC and FDA—were unceremoniously placed on administrative leave starting April 1, with termination letters scheduled for June.
The result? Labs are dark. Experiments abandoned. Disease surveillance programs stalled. FDA deadlines missed. Bird flu testing scrapped. Even a COVID-19 vaccine decision was left in bureaucratic limbo.
At the heart of the legal battle is the charge that the administration trampled constitutional boundaries by bypassing Congress to execute a dismantling of federal health functions. The states contend that Kennedy lacked the legal authority to engineer such sweeping changes, and that the execution of these mass layoffs and closures violates federal law by stripping agencies of their capacity to fulfill congressional mandates.
The plaintiffs are urging a judge to slam the brakes on Kennedy’s restructuring plan and force the federal government to restart shuttered programs, particularly the infectious disease labs critical to both state and national response capabilities.
New York’s Attorney General warned that the administration’s actions are not just bureaucratic reshuffling—they’re existential threats to public health. “You’re not making America healthy,” she said. “You’re putting lives at risk.”
HHS, however, maintains that the restructuring is a much-needed dose of efficiency. A spokesperson defended the purge, claiming the plan will save taxpayers $1.8 billion annually and streamline operations without compromising essential services.
But critics say the Trump administration’s so-called cost-cutting initiative—run in part by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency—has eviscerated vital federal health infrastructure. Programs supporting early childhood education, mental health, addiction recovery, and disease tracking have been left leaderless, labless, and underfunded.
Entire divisions once responsible for maternal health, HIV and AIDS research, and sexual assault prevention have reportedly been disbanded. The CDC, one of the world’s most vital disease-tracking entities, has been left limping—unable to meet its legal obligations in the wake of mass firings.
As the nation braces for future outbreaks, states are now forced to reroute diagnostic samples to a single New York lab, straining local systems and creating bottlenecks in disease response efforts.
The legal battle now underway could determine whether a sweeping federal health rollback engineered under the banner of budget discipline can proceed—or whether the courts will intervene to protect the nation’s medical backbone from executive scalpel work.
