“Our lawsuit is necessary to ensure that Tennessee can continue its 50-year track record of successfully providing these public health services to its neediest populations,” he said.
The lawsuit states that in “recent years” Tennessee had been receiving about $7 million in annual Title X funding from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Last year those funds allowed Tennessee to “serve over 40,000 needy patients” throughout the state. Title X is a Nixon-era federal family planning program.
HHS initially approved more funds to the state in October 2022, the suit says, but then rescinded its approval in March because of Tennessee’s abortion referral policies.
The state had informed HHS that, following the 2022 repeal of Roe v. Wade, Tennessee law “would prohibit most abortions,” with Title X workers instead “offer[ing] counseling and referrals only for legal pregnancy terminations.”
Though it initially indicated its approval, HHS subsequently threatened “to strip all of Tennessee’s Title X funding” because of its abortion policy, the suit says.
The state said it attempted a workaround by adopting a policy in which pregnant women were given “the opportunity to be provided information and counseling regarding all options that are legal in the state of Tennessee” but that HHS nevertheless “terminated Tennessee’s Title X grant.”