Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island and Connecticut are among 16 states and the District of Columbia suing the Trump administration over “its threats to revoke funding for sexual education programs that acknowledge trans and nonbinary gender identities,” according to LGBTQ Nation.

Reports LGBTQ Nation:

Led by Minnesota, Washington, and Oregon, the lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims that the administration has violated federal law and is encroaching on Congress’s spending authority.

The states are concerned with the Title V Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) program and the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), the latter of which supports states in teaching about both contraception and abstinence and focuses on places with high teen birth rates, as well as on kids who are homeless or in foster care.

The administration has threatened to defund the programs in states that refuse to remove all references to trans identities from the curricula. The lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff states will lose at least $35 million in funding if the government follows through on its threats.

“Suddenly forcing Plaintiff States to remove medically supported, complete, and culturally appropriate content in the materials for PREP and SRAE is contrary to the laws that Congress adopted and is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act,” the lawsuit states. 

It said the programs are “at odds” with the administration’s “insistence that sex is absolute, fixed, and binary, and that any reference to transgender or gender-diverse identity must be erased altogether.”

It also accused the federal government of forcing states to “erase entire categories of students,” creating an “untenable situation” in which officials are forced “to choose between losing federal funding for essential public health education programs or complying with unlawful funding conditions that undermine the central purpose of these programs and conflict with state and federal laws.” 

In addition to the three states leading the charge, others in the lawsuit include Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.

Read the complete LGBTQ Nation story here.

Not a subscriber?  Sign up today for a free subscription to Boston Spirit magazine, New England’s premier LGBT magazine.  We will send you a copy of Boston Spirit 6 times per year and we never sell/rent our subscriber information.  Click HERE to sign up.