The Trump administration quietly restored federal family planning money to Tennessee and Oklahoma, despite court rulings that the states weren’t entitled to funds because they refused to provide women information about terminating pregnancies or abortion referrals on request.
The decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to restore millions of dollars for the two states came as it simultaneously withheld nearly $66 million from clinics in the Title X program elsewhere. Title X for more than 50 years has provided sexual and reproductive health services especially to low-income, hard-to-reach people, including minors.
The Biden administration in 2023 cut off funding to Tennessee and Oklahoma, saying they violated federal rules by not offering counseling to patients about abortion. The states sued federal health officials. And courts ruled against the states.
On March 31, HHS restored $3.1 million in family planning funds for the Tennessee Department of Health and nearly $2 million for the Oklahoma State Department of Health, according to court filings. In the notices, HHS said family planning funds were sent to the two states “pursuant to a settlement agreement with the recipient.”
Yet “there has been no agreement with Tennessee to settle this litigation,” Department of Justice lawyers wrote in an April 23 court filing.
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Zach West, an official with the Office of the Oklahoma Attorney General, separately wrote on April 17 that the state’s grant notice “wrongly indicated that a settlement agreement had been reached. No agreement has yet been entertained or discussed in any substantial manner in this case.”
“To our …