One of Donald Trump’s executive orders that kicked off his second term was titled, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” Somehow, it led officials to scrub data from government websites without warning to doctors across the country who use it — including to address a chlamydia outbreak — which, in turn, led to one of the administration’s latest court losses.
That loss came Tuesday, when U.S. District Judge John Bates sided with a group called Doctors for America that brought a lawsuit against the government. The George W. Bush appointee ordered the government defendants to restore the relevant health data on websites including for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
Explaining his decision, Bates wrote that “everyday Americans, and most acutely, underprivileged Americans, seeking healthcare” are the ones who bear the harm of the government defendants’ actions.
“If those doctors cannot provide these individuals the care they need (and deserve) within the scheduled and often limited time frame, there is a chance that some individuals will not receive treatment, including for severe, life-threatening conditions,” Bates wrote.
Among the evidence he cited was from a doctor who works at a clinic serving one of the most underserved Chicago high schools. Bates recounted that the doctor relies on CDC information and until the websites went dark, the doctor would have consulted CDC resources to combat a recent chlamydia outbreak in the high school and worked to help ensure the outbreak didn’t recur.
“The public thus has a strong interest in avoiding these serious injuries to the public health,” Bates wrote, adding there’s nothing to suggest that restoring the data would interfere with Trump’s executive orders. The government defendants have until midnight Tuesday night to comply and the parties have until Thursday to file a report detailing compliance efforts as litigation continues in the case following Bates’ preliminary ruling. Given the emerging theme surrounding the Trump administration’s compliance or lack thereof with court orders, its compliance with this latest one will be worth watching as well. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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