The court paused an HHS order that forced teen pregnancy prevention grants to fund only abstinence-based programs after a judge found the agency’s supporting citations unreliable and possibly fabricated, and said the department failed to justify a blanket mandate or show sound evidence for its policy shift.
A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction stopping an HHS order that redirected teen pregnancy prevention funding toward abstinence-only strategies. The decision came after the court concluded the agency did not adequately justify imposing a one-size-fits-all approach and that the move already triggered millions of dollars in grant cuts around the country.
Judge Christopher Cooper focused less on ideology and more on basic credibility when he reviewed the agency’s filings. He found that HHS cited so-called studies about “body literacy” that either did not exist or did not support the claims attached to them.
“On the topic of body literacy, the notices (remarkably) reference public health studies that appear either not to exist or not to support the propositions for which they are cited, a hallmark of AI-created citations.”
Federal agencies are supposed to ground policy decisions in real evidence. When a judge says the studies cited may be fabricated, the problem goes beyond a sloppy footnote; it calls into question whether anyone at HHS vetted the material before filing it in court.
This is not an isolated error. HHS previously released a report called “Make America Healthy Again” that admitted to citation errors and references to articles that did not exist. That earlier episode plus the troubling citations here point to a systemic quality-control failure inside the department.
Cooper did not say abstinence education has no role. He acknowledged that abstinence-based programs “may well be appropriate for some age groups or communities.” His objection was procedural and legal: HHS provided no reasoned explanation or evidence to make abstinence the universal requirement for all grants.
“While abstinence-only education may well be appropriate for some age groups or communities, the agency has offered no explanation or evidence to support its across-the-board mandate that only abstinence strategies be pursued.”
Under the Administrative Procedure Act agencies must engage in reasoned decision-making and rely on actual evidence when changing policy. Cooper found that HHS skipped the necessary explanatory step and therefore acted in a way that could be labeled arbitrary and capricious.
The judge granted the injunction after weighing three familiar factors: the plaintiffs’ chance of prevailing on the merits, the harm to existing programs, and the balance of equities. He concluded the challengers were likely to win and that the funding cuts caused “irremediable harm” to programs that could not recover without court relief.
“The Court concludes that the Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on their arbitrary and capricious claim, combined with the severity and irremediable harm to their programming and the balance of equities in their favor, justify the issuance of a preliminary injunction in this case.”
Millions of dollars had already been pulled from prevention programs before the injunction took effect, so the ruling was not abstract. For communities dependent on those grants the damage was immediate and concrete, which heavily influenced the court’s decision to step in.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now heads HHS and the department’s pattern of questionable citations leaves it with a credibility gap it created for itself. Submitting evidence that a federal judge describes as fabricated casts every future HHS filing under a shadow and weakens the department’s hand across many policy fights.
Ambitious agendas need basic evidentiary rigor. Whether the phantom citations were generated by AI tools or by human error, the result is the same: a management failure that hands opponents an easy legal opening. Conservatives who supported reform expect accountability, not repeated mistakes that courts must correct.
If HHS wants to promote abstinence-based education as a policy preference, it can do so, but it must produce real studies and sound reasoning to support any broad mandate. Absent that work, courts will continue to demand a better evidentiary foundation before allowing agencies to upend funding streams that communities depend on.
