A court has ordered several US government agencies, including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to restore healthcare resources relating to diversity, including its application in clinical trials.
In January 2025, a number of webpages on the FDA and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were removed upon orders from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) after President Donald Trump signed an executive order (EO) entitled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”.
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US District Judge John Bates in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with defendants Doctors for America that the removal of these pages violated several federal laws, including the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
Doctors for America, who filed the lawsuit in February 2025, said the OPM ordered agencies to “[t]ake down” webpages promoting gender ideology within 48 hours was unlawful and spurred the sudden removals and modifications on 29 January.
The HHS defendants claim they removed the diversity related webpages and datasets lawfully in response to the EO adding that they believe it “harmed nobody”, however Doctors for America said the removal acutely harmed health care providers, policymakers, local governments, and others who have long relied on the webpages and datasets in their daily work.
Bates agreed with Doctors for America, stating that the defendants (FDA, HHS and OPM) violated the APA by “swiftly enacting and implementing sweeping and poorly thought-through directives that ordered the bulk removal of health care resources on which the government had induced substantial and ongoing reliance”.
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By GlobalData“The government is free to say what it wants, including about ‘gender ideology’. But in taking action, it must abide by the bounds of authority and the procedures that Congress has prescribed, through the APA and otherwise. And the government failed to do so here,” Bates concluded.
The judge granted in part the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, which will vacate the OPM memorandum “Initial Guidance Regarding President Trump’s Executive Order Defending Women” and the HHS memo “Action: Initial Guidance Regarding President Trump’s Executive Order Defending Women”.
The order also states that the defendants must also revert any affected pages “to their prior versions” before 12am on 29 January 2025.
