A federal judge halted the Trump administration’s recent abstinence-only overhaul of the federally funded Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program on Wednesday, throwing a wrench into the White House’s plan to accomplish a long-held goal of American conservatives.
Chistopher Cooper, a federal judge in Washington, ruled against the administration’s sweeping grant cuts to sex education programs in order to favor abstinence-only education.
“Millions of American teenagers have sex,” Cooper wrote, matter-of-fact, in the opening line of his decision.
“Alarmed by the country’s rising teenage birth rate, Congress funded grants through the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (‘TPP’) Program to support local initiatives proven to reduce teen pregnancy, as well as promising approaches that might also prove effective after further observation and study,” Cooper wrote, also saying that Congress intended for these programs to “employ a range of strategies, from encouragement of abstinence and delayed sexual activity to education about contraceptives.”
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Cooper also wrote that Health and Human Services had imposed conditions on grant recipients that were unreasonable, unexplained or that Congress did not intend.
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The program was established by Congress in 2010 to fund evidence-based sexual health curricula. The first Trump administration attempted to shorten grant periods and redirect funding toward abstinence-only-until-marriage approaches, but that triggered legal pushback from public health advocates.
In June, HHS abruptly canceled 53 out of 67 existing TPP grants — totaling roughly $68 million — citing “misalignment with agency priority” and defunding university, health department and Planned Parenthood programs across many states.
In July, the administration introduced a replacement framework shifting resources toward “reproductive goals counseling,” anatomy, fertility tracking, and abstinence rather than contraceptives.
Also in July, a coalition of organizations and local governments filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging HHS violated federal law by ignoring Congress’ statutory mandate that the program’s funds be guided by medical and scientific evidence, not political ideology.
The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on the curriculum of these sex education programs and grant requirements, but did not reinstate any of the previously cut funding “because of lingering uncertainty over the Court’s power to order such relief.”
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