On Monday, February 10, a federal judge ordered the restoration of the websites and data pertaining to the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration as the cases over each organization continue. Each online channel had been scrubbed in observance of President Trump’s executive order on gender ideology.
U.S. District Judge John Bates agreed to grant a temporary restraining order sought by the non-profit group Doctors for America (DFA), a progressive advocacy group representing physicians. In their argument, the organization explained that their members used the various websites when treating patients and conducting research. The claim asserted that the removal of them by the Department of Health and Human Services and its components not only hampers their daily work, but also violates federal law.
Bates, in his granting of the restraining order, found that the challengers were likely to succeed in their claims that the Department of Health and Human Services, CDC and FDA acted unlawfully when they stripped medical information from public-facing websites.
“It bears emphasizing who ultimately bears the harm of defendants’ actions: everyday Americans, and most acutely, underprivileged Americans, seeking healthcare,” he wrote in his opinion. Citing declarations from two doctors filed in the case, Bates said if they “cannot provide these individuals the care they need (and deserve) within the scheduled and often limited time frame, there is a chance that some individuals will not receive treatment, including for severe, life-threatening conditions.
“The public thus has a strong interest in avoiding these serious injuries to the public health. No backend remedy could ameliorate the inability to provide all required care during an appointment time to a patient who cannot return in the future.”
The order followed a 90-minute hearing Monday on DFA’s bid to win the restraining order that not only would restore the online pages, but also block the agencies “from removing or substantially modifying” other datasets to implement the executive order.
The Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had until midnight Tuesday to bring back the specific web pages cited in the lawsuit. As of this writing, some information has been returned to the websites, but with the following disclaimer from the Trump administration: “Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website as of 11:59 PM on February 11, 2025. Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department reject it.”