Trump admin.’s changes to Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program blocked by judge

August 27, 2026

A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cannot bar funding under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPP) to organizations it accuses of promoting sexual activity.

The Christian Post reports that Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Trump administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act by limiting TPP grants to programs that promote abstinence and “body literacy.”

After laying out guidelines for future TPP grants, the Trump administration sent termination letters to existing awardees, telling them that their use of the funding “no longer effectuate[d] the program goals or agency priorities.”

The letters told awardees, “After a review of all curricular content, [the agency] believes that some curricula normalize adolescent sexual activity and are not age appropriate.”

In last week’s published opinion Cooper wrote, “HHS is perfectly entitled to formulate its own views about how to stem teen pregnancy — or even whether it is worth preventing at all — and to pursue policy initiatives consistent with its viewpoint.”

The judge added, “It is not at liberty, under the Administrative Procedure Act (‘APA’), to impose conditions on grant recipients that Congress did not intend or that are unreasonable or unexplained. The preliminary record suggests that HHS has done just that.”

Cooper’s ruling grants a preliminary injunction in favor of the plaintiffs — Hennepin County, Minnesota; King County, Washington; Planned Parenthood of the Heartland; and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) — which sought to keep HHS from applying the new policy while the litigation continues.

While Cooper sided with the plaintiffs in blocking the new guidance for future TPP grants, he declined to block HHS’ retroactive cancellation of existing ones.

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