Trump admin.'s changes to Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program blocked by judge

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, August 26, 2026

A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cannot bar funding under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPP) to organizations it accuses of promoting sexual activity. However, the court declined to reverse the retroactive cancellation of such grants.

In an opinion published last week, Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Trump administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act by limiting TPP grants to programs that promote abstinence and “body literacy.”

“HHS is perfectly entitled to formulate its own views about how to stem teen pregnancy — or even whether it is worth preventing at all — and to pursue policy initiatives consistent with its viewpoint,” Cooper wrote.

“It is not at liberty, under the Administrative Procedure Act (‘APA’), to impose conditions on grant recipients that Congress did not intend or that are unreasonable or unexplained. The preliminary record suggests that HHS has done just that,” Cooper added.

Cooper was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat who was in office when Congress created the TPP in 2010.

Along with laying out guidelines for future TPP grants, the Trump administration sent termination letters to existing awardees, telling them that their use of the funding “no longer effectuate[d] the program goals or agency priorities.” The letters told awardees, “After a review of all curricular content, [the agency] believes that some curricula normalize adolescent sexual activity and are not age appropriate.”

The judge notes that the TPP program "experienced turmoil in the last year and a half." HHS issued the last round of TPP funding in 2023 for a five-year project that would last until 2028.  

"In March 2025, as the cohort prepared to enter its third year of the project period,
HHS released guidance clarifying that recipients were expected to 'review and be aware of
current Presidential Executive Orders,' including those that, in the Administration’s words,
rejected 'gender ideology extremism,' 'ended radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling,' and
'ended radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing,'" Cooper noted. 

Cooper’s ruling grants a preliminary injunction in favor of the plaintiffs — Hennepin County, Minnesota; King County, Washington; Planned Parenthood of the Heartland; and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) — which sought to keep HHS from applying the new policy while the litigation continues. Hennepin County, King County and Planned Parenthood of the Heartland saw TPP grants they had already been awarded diverted. SIECUS does not receive TPP grants but partners with groups that do.

The plaintiffs filed their lawsuit in federal court last month, warning that the adolescents “the Program is designed to help will suffer as appropriated funds are redirected to programs that have not been proven to reduce teen pregnancy.” The Trump administration terminated 53 TPP grants and diverted $68 million that had been previously allocated under the program.

While Cooper sided with the plaintiffs in blocking the new guidance for future TPP grants, he declined to block HHS’ retroactive cancellation of existing ones.

"The Court declines, however, to order the interim reinstatement of existing grants at this early stage, as it is less clear that this Court, as opposed to the Court of Federal Claims, may exercise jurisdiction over those portions of Plaintiffs’ APA claims that seek such relief," Cooper wrote.

The judge stated that the administration’s new TPP policy sought to ensure that “awardees ‘align’ with agency policy priorities eschewing diversity, equity and inclusion (‘DEI’), ‘gender ideology,’ the denial of the sex binary, and the ‘normaliz[ation]’ of sexual activity among minors.”

HHS clarified that “[D]iscretionary awards shall not be used to fund [...] activities where race or intentional proxies for race will be used as a selection criterion for [...] program participation; denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans, or the belief that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic.” Additional requirements imposed on those seeking TPP funding included a commitment to incorporate “sexual risk avoidance” education in their programming, which Cooper described as “an abstinence-only approach to teen pregnancy prevention.”

Applicants must also promote “body literacy” education, defined as “the ability to understand how the body functions in a state of health.” Awardees are further required to “affirm marriage and parenthood as meaningful and valued components of adult life.”