The Balance of Power

Dismantling HHS

Press Release:

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tong Sues to Stop Dis­man­tling of Health and Human Ser­vices Depart­ment

Preceding Event:

As part of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and Elon Musk’s Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy ini­tia­tives, Sec­re­tary of Health and Human Ser­vices (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a restruc­tur­ing of the depart­ment.

The announce­ment said the changes to HHS would save tax­pay­ers $1.8 bil­lion per year. Accord­ing to the announce­ment, the depart­men­t’s divi­sions would shrink from 28 to 15. Region­al offices of the depart­ment would be reduced from 10 to five. The work­force was intend­ed to be cut to 65,000 from 85,000 (62,000 from 82,000 accord­ing to the HHS press release). Accord­ing to the suit, on March 27, 2025 HHS issues a press release announc­ing “it would send ter­mi­na­tion notices to 10,000 HHS employ­ees and shut­ter dozens of agen­cies as part of Sec­re­tary Kennedy’s direc­tive to ‘Make Amer­i­ca Healthy Again’.” Then, on April 1, 2025 rough­ly 10,000 employ­ees were ter­mi­nat­ed from across the coun­try. Half of HHS’s offices around the nation were closed.

General Overview:

Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong joined 20 attor­neys in fil­ing a law­suit against Kennedy, HHS and oth­er Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials in order to try to stop the admin­is­tra­tion from dis­man­tling HHS.

“Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tong and the coali­tion argue that these sweep­ing actions are in clear vio­la­tion of hun­dreds of fed­er­al statutes and reg­u­la­tions, and that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion does not have the author­i­ty to make these reck­less changes,” the press release said. The attor­neys gen­er­al alleged that by tak­ing these actions with­out con­gres­sion­al approval, the admin­is­tra­tion is dis­re­gard­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers and under­min­ing the laws and bud­gets enact­ed by Con­gress to pro­tect pub­lic health.

“The coali­tion is urg­ing the court to halt the mass fir­ings, reverse the ille­gal reor­ga­ni­za­tion, and restore the crit­i­cal health ser­vices that mil­lions of Amer­i­cans depend on,” the law­suit said.

Connecticut Nexus:

In the March 27, 2025 direc­tive, divi­sions that pro­vid­ed resources and funds for states and their agen­cies to con­duct research to fur­ther health and well­ness were closed. The Preg­nan­cy Risk Assess­ment Mon­i­tor­ing Sys­tem (PRAMS), was one of these pro­grams that received grants from the Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol, which is part of the HHS. This pro­gram is no longer in place.

The law­suit stat­ed, “Plain­tiff Con­necti­cut, as one exam­ple, uses PRAMS data to col­lab­o­rate with com­mu­ni­ty and state orga­ni­za­tions and pro­vide insight into the expe­ri­ences of the Med­ic­aid pop­u­la­tion dur­ing preg­nan­cy,” the law­suit said. “This sup­port­ed the devel­op­ment of the HUSKY Mater­ni­ty Bun­dle, an ini­tia­tive aimed at improv­ing out­comes for peo­ple on Med­ic­aid that launched this year.”

Date of filing:

May 5, 2025

Case #:

1:25-cv-00196

Case title:

State of New York et al v. Kennedy et al

Plaintiffs: 19 states and D.C.

Defendants:

Court:

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND

Status as of Dec. 1, 2025:

OPEN
Last fil­ing: Nov. 19, 2025

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