US States Sue Over RFK Jr’s HHS Layoffs and Reorganization

A coalition of US states is suing US Health Secretary RFK Jr and the Trump administration over the “Make America Healthy Again” directive that led to thousands of layoffs and the closure or consolidation of multiple agencies and regional offices in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“This administration is not streamlining the federal government; they are sabotaging it and all of us,” said a statement from New York Attorney General, Letitia James. “When you fire the scientists who research infectious diseases, silence the doctors who care for pregnant patients, and shut down the programs that help firefighters and miners breathe or children thrive, you are not making America healthy – you are putting countless lives at risk.”

The lawsuit argues that the reorganization of HHS has had serious consequences: “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. The Food and Drug Administration missed a vaccine application deadline and cancelled a critical test for the bird flu virus, suspending that testing program for the year.”

It continues: “Dismantling HHS by terminating the people necessary for it to meet its own mandates, and paralyzing it by means of a confusing reorganization, is an unlawful effort to undercut the will of Congress who ordered the agencies and programs to run.” The coalition further accuses HHS of violating the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution by refusing to spend funds that Congress had specifically allocated for health programs, including disease research and workplace safety.

RFK Jr has previously admitted that up to 20 percent of the layoffs might have been mistakes. The lawsuit explains that RFK “agreed that he forewent a careful line-by-line review of who should be fired because ‘it takes too long’ and he would lose ‘political momentum’—making plain that the process used to determine layoffs was arbitrary and capricious. The March 27 Directive came after scores of probationary employees were laid off and many employees took a buy-out offer. None of these layoffs were necessary to accommodate a funding shortfall—Congress’s appropriations have remained steady, or in many cases, grown in recent years. All told, 20,000 full-time employees—almost 25 percent of the HHS headcount—would be terminated in a few months to save, by Defendants’ own estimate, less than one percent of HHS expenditures.”

The coalition has asked the court to throw out the directive, block any further implementation, and affirm that HHS acted outside its legal authority. It is also seeking to recover legal costs, but stresses that the lawsuit is about protecting critical health and ensuring that major decisions about public health aren’t made in haste, or for political gain

Speaking on social media platform X, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said: “HHS is under attack, and we won’t stand for it.”

In a separate statement, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown described the reorganization of HHS as “plainly illegal and a moral failing.”

States included in the coalition are New York, Washington, Rhode Island, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Wisconsin.