A federal judge has sided with Planned Parenthood in his ruling that the Trump administration’s decision to end the abortion provider’s sex ed taxpayer-funded grant two years early is unlawful.
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Rice in Spokane, Washington issued a permanent injunction against the Trump administration, ruling that the five-year grant period – begun in 2015 during the Obama administration – cannot be ended two years earlier than planned.
Rice, an Obama nominee, said in his decision that the Trump Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “arbitrarily and capriciously terminated” Planned Parenthood’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP), which teaches children about contraception, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, gender ideology, and LGBT sex.
“Plaintiffs have come forth with evidence of the success of the TPPProgram and Defendants have failed to rebut Plaintiffs’ arguments,” wrote Rice.
“Plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm if their five-year cooperative agreements were terminated early when the parties intended these programs to last five years,” the judge continued. “The Court determines that the public interest weighs in favor of Plaintiffs, as it would prevent harm to the community, as discussed above, and prevent loss of data regarding the effectiveness of teen pregnancy prevention.”
Planned Parenthood sued the Trump administration after it ended the grants for 81 organizations last summer.
The abortion vendor celebrating the ruling on Twitter:
Last week, a federal judge in Washington, DC also ruled the Trump administration’s cuts to the Obama TPPP are illegal.
In August, Trump HHS official Valerie Huber told Breitbart News there is no evidence the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program has been responsible for a drop in teen birth rates.
“The research for this program is more than disappointing,” Huber said. “More than 70 percent of the program showed no impact or negative impact – which means that the communities that implemented these programs were promised that, if you implement these evidence-based programs, you can expect to achieve similar positive results in your community.”
In 2014, Planned Parenthood announced that 15 of its affiliates across the country were awarded grants of some $19 million and were “recognized as leaders in teen pregnancy prevention” when they were selected by HHS “to receive new grant funding as part of President Obama’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative.”
The ruling comes during a week that saw parents in cities across the United States and in the U.K., Canada, and Australia pull their children out of school to protest Planned Parenthood’s “pornographic,” “gender-bending” sex ed programs.
The Sex Ed Sit Out was organized by “Activist Mommy” Elizabeth Johnston.
“I personally represent the millions of taxpayers who are homeschoolers and – even though we do not utilize the services of the public schools – we are disgusted that our money is going to teach children how to question their gender, perform anal and oral sex, and masturbate,” Johnston told Breitbart News.
She added whether children attend public schools or homeschooling parents are paying taxes to support public schools, more parents are finding that school officials and school boards are refusing to listen to their concerns about the graphic sex ed curricula.