The Balance of Power

Conditions on Sex Ed Funding

Press Release:

Ille­gal Con­di­tions on Pro­grams that Sup­port Com­pre­hen­sive Sex­u­al Health Edu­ca­tion

Preceding Event:

On Jan. 20, 2025, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump issued Exec­u­tive Order 14168 which states, “it is the pol­i­cy of the Unit­ed States to rec­og­nize two sex­es, male and female. These sex­es are not change­able and are ground­ed in fun­da­men­tal and incon­tro­vert­ible real­i­ty.” It says that this “shall gov­ern all Exec­u­tive inter­pre­ta­tion of and appli­ca­tion of Fed­er­al law and admin­is­tra­tion pol­i­cy.”
Then, on Aug. 6, 2025, the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices issues a series of Notices of Awards for its fis­cal 2024–2025 Per­son­al Respon­si­bil­i­ty Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram (PREP) grant awards and Sex­u­al Risk Avoid­ance Edu­ca­tion (SRAE) pro­gram grant awards. Both of these pro­grams are designed to offer edu­ca­tion on absti­nence and safe, respon­si­ble sex­u­al activ­i­ty. These notices includ­ed new terms and con­di­tions, requir­ing pro­grams not teach gen­der ide­ol­o­gy or the con­cept that gen­der is dif­fer­ent from bio­log­i­cal sex to receive the awards.
Then, accord­ing to the suit, “On August 7, HHS issued Sup­ple­men­tal Terms and Con­di­tions for PREP awards and SRAE awards express­ly pro­hibit­ing grant recip­i­ents ‘from includ­ing gen­der ide­ol­o­gy in any pro­gram or ser­vice that is fund­ed with this award’ and claim­ing that ‘gen­der ide­ol­o­gy is out­side the scope of the statu­to­ry author­i­ty for this award under the autho­riz­ing statutes.’ The Sup­ple­men­tal T&Cs are ‘effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly’ and ‘super­sede all pre­vi­ous sim­i­lar T&Cs and will remain in effect until updat­ed for sub­se­quent awards’.”

General Overview:

Accord­ing to a press release from Sept. 26, 2025, “Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong and a coali­tion of 16 states and the Dis­trict Colum­bia today sued the U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices to stop the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion from arbi­trar­i­ly pulling fund­ing for long­stand­ing teen repro­duc­tive and sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion pro­grams from states unless they remove lan­guage regard­ing gen­der iden­ti­ty.”
“Through threat­en­ing let­ters and coer­cive terms and con­di­tions, the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices (HHS) is attempt­ing to force Plain­tiff States to rewrite sex­u­al health cur­ric­u­la to erase entire cat­e­gories of stu­dents,” the law­suit claims. “Specif­i­cal­ly, HHS seeks to for­bid even a pass­ing men­tion of inclu­sive gen­der iden­ti­ty in the Per­son­al Respon­si­bil­i­ty Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram and the Title V Sex­u­al Risk Avoid­ance Edu­ca­tion pro­gram. This is the lat­est attempt from the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion to tar­get and harm trans­gen­der and gen­der-diverse youth as well as youth with dif­fer­ences in sex devel­op­ment (DSD) in the Plain­tiff States,” all of which they argue vio­lates the statutes that cre­at­ed these pro­grams. Defen­dants’ unlaw­ful actions irrepara­bly harm Plain­tiff States by forc­ing them, and their sub­grantees, into an impos­si­ble posi­tion: lose crit­i­cal fund­ing for sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion pro­grams, or vio­late fed­er­al and state laws requir­ing med­ical­ly accu­rate, non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry infor­ma­tion with­in those pro­grams,” the law­suit said.
The states claim the action vio­lates the Admin­is­tra­tive Pro­ce­dures Act and vio­lates Arti­cle 1 Sec­tion 8 of the Con­sti­tu­tion — the spend­ing clause — vio­lat­ing the sep­a­ra­tion between the Exec­u­tive and Leg­isla­tive branch­es.

Connecticut Nexus:

Accord­ing to the press release, “The Trump Administration’s threat puts at risk more than $1.6 mil­lion in fund­ing award­ed to Con­necti­cut through the Per­son­al Respon­si­bil­i­ty Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram (PREP). Con­necti­cut has used PREP fund­ing to sup­port evi­dence-based edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming that helps reduce teen preg­nan­cy and the spread of sex­u­al­ly-trans­mit­ted infec­tions. His­tor­i­cal­ly, the PREP pro­gram has served an annu­al aver­age of 800–1,200 at-risk youth in Con­necti­cut.”

Date of filing:

Sept. 26, 2025

Case #:

6:25-cv-01748

Case title:

State of Wash­ing­ton et al v. Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices et al

Plaintiffs: 16 states and D.C.

Defendants:

Court:

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF OREGON

Status as of Dec. 1, 2025:

OPEN
Last fil­ing: Nov. 18, 2025
Pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion cur­rent­ly in place

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