A federal judge has blocked a Trump administration rule that would bar taxpayer-funded family planning clinics from referring patients to abortion providers, according to the state attorney general.
The preliminary injunction on Thursday bars enforcement nationwide of a policy that was due to go into effect on 3 May over the vehement objections of abortion rights supporters who have decried it as a “gag rule” designed to silence doctor-patient communications about abortion options.
“Today’s ruling ensures that clinics across the nation can remain open and continue to provide quality, unbiased healthcare to women,” the Washington state attorney general, Bob Ferguson, said in a statement announcing the decision.
The state was a named plaintiff in the case challenging restrictions proposed by the US health and human services department (HHS) to its Title X program subsidizing reproductive healthcare and family planning costs for low-income women.
Neither the White House nor HHS immediately responded to requests from Reuters for comment.
The ruling by the US district judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima in eastern Washington capped a hearing in which oral arguments were presented by both sides.
Ferguson’s statement quoted the judge, in ruling from the bench, as saying: “There is no public interest in perpetuating unlawful agency action.”
A federal judge in Oregon earlier this week said he intended to grant a preliminary injunction in a similar but separate lawsuit brought by 20 states and the District of Columbia. Two more lawsuits challenging the Title X restrictions are pending in California and Maine.
The restrictions are aimed at fulfilling Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to end federal support for Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides abortions and other health services for women under Title X.
Congress appropriated $286m in Title X grants in 2017 to Planned Parenthood and other health centers to provide birth control, screening for diseases and other reproductive health and counseling to low-income women.
The funding is already prohibited from being used for abortions, but abortion opponents have long complained that the money in effect subsidizes Planned Parenthood as a whole.
Planned Parenthood provides healthcare services to about 40% of the 4 million people who rely on Title X funding annually, and the organization has argued that community health centers would be unable to absorb its patients.
Under the new rule, clinics that receive Title X funding would be barred from referring patients for abortion as a method of family planning. The new regulation also would require financial and physical separation between facilities funded by Title X and those providing abortions.
Abortion opponents have argued the plan would not ban abortion counseling but would ensure that taxpayer funding does not support clinics that also perform the procedure.
