By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) – A federal judge on Tuesday ordered U.S. health agencies to restore websites that they abruptly took offline in response to an executive order by President Donald Trump telling them to scrub websites of “gender ideology extremism.”
The temporary restraining order by U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C. came in response to a lawsuit by the left-leaning medical advocacy group Doctors for America, which said the sudden removal of websites by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration hampered doctors’ and researchers’ ability to fight disease.
Bates ordered all websites specifically identified by Doctors for America in its court filings be restored by 11:59 p.m. (0459 GMT) on Tuesday. He ordered the government to consult with the group to identify any other materials that doctors rely on and restore them by February 14.
The White House, CDC and FDA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The materials taken offline by the CDC include a page on behavioral health risks among youth, which Doctors for America says is important for understanding health challenges faced by young people, including bullying and vaping; pages with data on the prevalence of HIV and associated risky behaviors; and a page on getting tested for HIV.
The FDA removed pages recommending the inclusion of more women and underrepresented groups in clinical trials, according to the lawsuit.
Trump, a Republican, signed an executive order on his first day back in office last month that said the United States will recognize two sexes, male and female.
On January 29, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, issued a memorandum instructing agencies to take down any public-facing materials that promote what they deem to be “gender ideology” by January 31.
The loss of the websites has already impacted doctors’ work, the lawsuit alleged. One doctor, who works at a clinic serving low-income communities in Chicago, said in a declaration filed in court that she had been unable to access CDC resources she would normally use to combat a recent Chlamydia outbreak in a high school by stepping up testing.
Bates wrote in an opinion on Tuesday that the immediate harm alleged by doctors supported an order restoring the websites, and that the health agencies had likely not engaged in a reasoned decision-making process about removing the websites as required by federal law. He said there was no reason the agencies could not work to comply with Trump’s order while keeping the sites available.
“Finally, it bears emphasizing who ultimately bears the harm of defendants’ actions: everyday Americans, and most acutely, underprivileged Americans, seeking healthcare,” the judge wrote.
Bates, who was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, on Friday declined to block billionaire businessman Elon Musk’s government cost-cutting department from accessing the U.S. Department of Labor’s systems in response to a separate lawsuit by government employee unions.
Doctors for America was founded in 2008 by Vivek Murthy, who served as U.S. Surgeon General under Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden; Mandy Cohen, who served as CDC director under Biden; and Alice Chen, now a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles medical school.
(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Alexia Garamfalvi)
