Planned Parenthood and King County File Lawsuits to Protect Evidence-Based Programming for Young People and Families

Advocacy groups file lawsuits against the administration to ensure teens have comprehensive education and health care

SEATTLE — Today, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands (PPGNHI), joined by Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho and Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, filed a federal lawsuit in Spokane, Wash., against the Trump-Pence administration for wrongfully ending the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP) grants abruptly and arbitrarily. The evidence-based program will end two years early and eliminate program evaluations that have been underway for two years.

In two separate lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court, Planned Parenthood and Public Health – Seattle & King County seek to stop the administration from terminating TPPP two years early. Through TPPP, both Planned Parenthood and Public Health – Seattle & King County provide sex education, youth development, abstinence education, and health service-related resources to thousands of youth and families.

“This administration has a reckless disregard for science and data,” said Carole Miller, chief learning officer at PPGNHI. “By eliminating funding for evidence-based programming and redirecting funds to abstinence-only programs, we are setting ourselves up for failure. TPPP is popular; it does good work, and it has helped millions of young people stay safe and healthy. We are going to fight this in the court every step of the way because more than a million people benefit from these tools and resources, often in places where there are no other programs that help young people and families make healthy decisions about their future.”

Created in 2010, the TPP programs have helped millions of young people make informed decisions about their bodies and lives through a series of programs and health service-related resources. TPPP is a community informed program based in evidence that builds on what is proven to help young people stay safe and make healthy decisions about their future, while also partnering with communities to ensure local input is included, so the programs can meet those needs. These evidence-based models have already contributed to the dramatic decline in unintended pregnancies.

“The Trump administration had no legal right to eliminate the teen pregnancy prevention grants and block us from completing our research,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine. “King County created FLASH, one of the most respected sexual health education programs in the United States with more than 80,000 lessons downloaded annually. Pulling back the funding completely disregards science and evidence in favor of right-wing ideology that is out of touch with reality. We are fighting back to protect women’s and young people’s health, and to continue effective programs that meet our common goals.”

Despite the mounting evidence that TPPP contributes to declines in teen birth rates, the Trump-Pence administration is attempting to illegally dismantle the program. The illegal end to TPPP grants disproportionately affects communities with high rates of unintended teen pregnancy, youth of color, families in rural communities, and youth who already face significant barriers when trying to access information or health care.

Planned Parenthood conducts programs in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York, Oregon, Utah, and Washington state. These programs have empowered countless youth and families with the facts they need to control their lives.

The administration’s action to illegally end TPPP is a part of a systematic effort by the Trump-Pence HHS to erode the agency’s mission of upholding science- and evidence-based policies. HHS has banned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from using specific words, such as vulnerable, evidence-based, science-based and diversity in agency communications; has attacked evidence-based programs like TPPP and Title X; and rolled out a FY19 budget that shows a clear agenda to block women’s access to birth control and other preventive care, dismantle programs like Medicaid, and impose their extreme ideological beliefs on all people.