A federal court has thrown a wrench into a sweeping attempt by the Trump administration to radically remake the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), halting a plan that aimed to gut its workforce and consolidate its sprawling agency network.
U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose in Rhode Island issued a forceful injunction, putting the brakes on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s controversial restructuring blueprint. The plan, announced in March, sought to eliminate 10,000 jobs, shutter half of HHS’ regional offices, and merge 28 divisions into 15 — a bureaucratic demolition that Democratic-led states said would leave the nation’s health infrastructure in shambles.
Judge DuBose sided with a coalition of 19 states and the District of Columbia, who warned that the cuts had already undermined essential public health functions and violated federal law. The court found that HHS had acted in a manner “arbitrary and capricious,” lacking the authority to orchestrate wholesale structural overhauls without Congress.
In her ruling, DuBose declared, “The Executive Branch does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress.”
The order freezes all further firings and restructuring at four critical arms of HHS: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Office of Head Start, the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the legal charge, called the decision a “lifeline for vulnerable communities,” asserting it preserves services that were on the brink of collapse.
Behind the restructuring push was not just Trump’s signature promise to shrink the federal government, but also the Musk-backed “Department of Government Efficiency,” which framed the plan as an overdue housecleaning of bloated bureaucracy.
But the fallout has been severe, the court heard. Labs shuttered, research abandoned, early childhood education centers left hanging — all part of a swift and severe campaign to cut government fat, critics said, without regard for the muscle being slashed in the process.
Some employees had already been reinstated amid public backlash and rising alarm from within the healthcare community. The court’s ruling arrived just one day before the terminations were set to take full effect.
While HHS continues to defend its plan as a necessary modernization, the court’s order now makes clear: dramatic transformations to health governance can’t happen at the stroke of a pen — especially when Congress isn’t holding it.
