Attorney General Ellison sues to challenge unlawful Title X funding conditions
Title X provided $17.1M in public health funding for Minnesota in 2026
August 27, 2026 (SAINT PAUL) — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison today joined a coalition of 23 states in suing to block a new Trump Administration policy that threatens to strip federal family planning funding from states and providers unless they meet a variety of unlawful conditions. The lawsuit, filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, challenges new conditions on Title X funds, which support reproductive health care, family planning, cancer screenings, and other critical preventive care for millions of Americans nationwide. The new conditions will penalize funding recipients and providers that refuse to abandon nondiscrimination initiatives or refuse to conform their Title X programs to the administration’s ideological vision of family planning. The states are asking the court to block the unlawful and discriminatory conditions and protect Americans’ access to affordable, high-quality health care.
"Title X is an essential program that provides funding for family planning and reproductive healthcare that Minnesotans rely on,” said Attorney General Ellison. “It’s unlawful for Trump to threaten to withhold Title X funding from any organization that does not align with his extreme ideology. Healthcare should be between a patient and their doctor. There’s no room in that equation for Donald Trump, so I’m taking him to court to end these ridiculous funding conditions.”
Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated specifically to family planning and related preventive health services. For more than 50 years, Title X has helped millions of low-income patients access contraception, cancer screenings, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, pregnancy testing and counseling, and other preventive health care.
In July, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a new funding notice for the next five-year grant cycle that, for the first time, requires applicants to align their programs with a sweeping set of political priorities as a condition of receiving or keeping federal funds. The priorities include eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, excluding and stigmatizing transgender people, discouraging the use of contraception in favor of natural family planning, requiring clinics to counsel all patients toward marriage and parenthood rather than providing neutral, patient-centered guidance, and complying with unrelated political priorities like "ending crime and disorder on America's streets.” Providers who do not comply risk losing their funding altogether.
In 2026, approximately $3.5 million dollars in Title X funding flowed into Minnesota to Planned Parenthood North Central States (PPNCS) and Ramsey County. Minnesota supplements this longtime federal investment with state initiates, including committing $13.6 million annually through the state Sexual and Reproductive Health Services program. Together, these funding sources represent more than $17.1 million annually supporting publicly funded sexual and reproductive health services in Minnesota. Loss of Title X funding would reduce the combined public investment in these services by approximately 21 percent.
Attorney General Ellison and the coalition argue that the new HHS conditions conflict with Title X’s governing statute and regulations, which require providers to offer a broad range of contraceptive methods, provide nondirective counseling, and serve all patients, including LGBTQ+ individuals, in an inclusive and nondiscriminatory manner. The states also argue that HHS unlawfully imposed the new conditions without the notice-and-comment process required under the Administrative Procedure Act. Additionally, the coalition argues that the conditions are so vague that providers cannot reasonably determine what compliance requires, in violation of the Constitution's Spending Clause, which limits the government's ability to attach unclear or unrelated strings to federal funding.
The coalition is asking the court to declare the administration’s new political conditions unlawful, block HHS from enforcing them, and preserve access to Title X funding for state health agencies and other qualified grant recipients and providers under the program’s existing, longstanding rules.
Joining Attorney General Ellison in filing this lawsuit, which was led by the attorneys general of New York, and Massachusetts, are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
