California, other states sue to block Trump administration cuts to health department

California and a coalition of other states sued the Trump administration Monday to block sweeping cuts to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, arguing they are unconstitutional and endanger Americans.

The lawsuit specifically challenges department Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s March 27 directive firing 10,000 full-time HHS employees, consolidating 28 department divisions into 15 and shuttering five of 10 regional offices, including one in San Francisco. The moves have upended an array of critical services, the states argue, including by shuttering laboratories monitoring the nation’s current measles outbreak.

The lawsuit — brought by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and the attorneys general of 18 other states and the District of Columbia — argues the cuts are “arbitrary and capricious” and unconstitutional, violating the Administrative Procedure Act and going “beyond the scope of presidential power” by usurping the authority of Congress to appropriate funding toward certain government services, Bonta’s office said.

“The Trump Administration does not have the power to incapacitate a department that Congress created, nor can it decline to spend funds that were appropriated by Congress for that department,” Bonta said in a statement. “That’s why my fellow attorneys general and I are taking the Trump Administration to court — HHS is under attack, and we won’t stand for it.”

The lawsuit asks the courts to declare the cuts illegal, block or reverse their implementation and undo the firings, Bonta’s office said. It was one of two lawsuits filed by Bonta’s office against the Trump administration Monday — the second challenging new federal restrictions on wind energy.

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Neither Health and Human Services nor the White House responded to requests for comment Monday.

Health and Human Services previously characterized the changes as a “dramatic restructuring” of the agency in line with an executive order by President Trump in February that tasked advisor Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency with “eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity” in the federal workforce, including through mass firings.

The department said the overhaul also would help it focus on Kennedy’s priorities of “ending America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins.”

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said in a statement. “This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

Kennedy said that “bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient” over time, “even when most of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants,” and that the overhaul would “be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves.”

“That’s the entire American public, because our goal is to Make America Healthy Again,” he said, repeating a slogan the Trump campaign took up after Kennedy suspended his own presidential bid to back Trump in August.

Kennedy was confirmed by the Senate as Health and Human Services secretary in February amid sharp criticism from Democrats, who lambasted the eccentric scion of the politically storied Kennedy family as an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who for years has spread dangerous, unscientific beliefs about a host of health issues and viruses, from HIV to COVID-19.

Kennedy has continued to cause alarm since, including through his handling of the nation’s measles outbreak, which in recent months has swept through large parts of the Southwest where vaccination rates have lagged.

Rather than push for greater vaccination, which has proved highly effective and safe, Kennedy has directed his department to look for new treatment options. Scientists have derided the move as a foolish and likely ineffective diversion of resources in the face of a serious and deadly threat — and one that is unnecessary, given the effectiveness of the existing measles vaccine.

In their lawsuit, the states refer to Kennedy’s “history of spinning conspiracy theories” and advocating for the dismantling of Health and Human Services, Bonta’s office said. Already, his directive downsizing the agency is causing harm, crippling support for programs such as Head Start, ending production of N95 masks and shuttering laboratories that monitor infectious diseases such as measles, Bonta’s office said.

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The Associated Press has reported that HHS cuts under Kennedy appear to have eliminated more than a dozen data-gathering programs that track deaths and diseases across the nation.

Congress provided Health and Human Services with a budget of $1.8 trillion in 2024, and has passed various laws that outline its mission, Bonta’s office said.

Including departures from an earlier buyout, the department has lost about 20,000 of its 82,000 employees since the start of the Trump administration, Bonta’s office said.

The states argue in their lawsuit that Health and Human Services fell into disarray after termination notices went out April 1, thousands of employees were “immediately expelled from their work email, laptops, and offices,” and work across the department “came to a sudden halt.”

“Throughout HHS, critical offices were left unable to perform statutory functions. There was no one to answer the phone, factories went into shutdown mode, experiments were abandoned, trainings were cancelled, site visits were postponed, application portals were closed, laboratories stopped testing for infectious diseases such as hepatitis, and partnerships were immediately suspended.”

Joining Bonta in the lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

The lawsuit was the 17th filed by Bonta’s office against the Trump administration. The 18th came Monday, too, as California joined 16 other states and the District of Columbia in suing the administration over its halting of federal approvals for offshore and onshore wind energy projects — a move that the states argue violate the Administrative Procedure Act and their right to pursue clean energy sources.

California has separately sued the Trump administration over Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to cut billions of dollars in federal public health grants aimed at increasing state resilience to infectious disease, based on similar arguments about the administration overreaching its authority to contradict decisions by Congress on federal spending.

California leaders also have raised concerns about the planned closure of the Health and Human Services office in San Francisco. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said the move was “shortsighted” and would have “detrimental impacts to our public health response capabilities,” and that she was “examining all possible avenues to fight back” against the cuts.