Wisconsin among states suing Trump administration over COVID-era funding cancellations by HHS

AI-assisted summary
• Wisconsin joins a multi-state lawsuit against the Trump administration over the cancellation of COVID-19 relief grants.
• The lawsuit argues that the termination of these grants, totaling billions of dollars nationwide, was unlawful and arbitrary.
• Wisconsin stands to lose over $225 million in funding used for various public health initiatives, including mental health services and addiction treatment.
• The grant cancellations have already resulted in the closure of some Wisconsin programs, including a mental health helpline and a respite home for adults with addiction.

Wisconsin is one of nearly two dozen states suing President Donald Trump's administration over last week's cancellation of COVID-era grants that amount to more than $225 million in funding Wisconsin had expected to yet receive.

The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, argues the grant cancellations were unlawful and arbitrary and asks the federal court to block the cancellation of billions of dollars in COVID-era funding allocated to state and local health departments across the country.

The funding, which was authorized by Congress as part of COVID-19 relief bills, has been used not only for COVID-specific purposes like vaccination and testing, but also for mental health services, addiction treatment, tracking other infectious diseases and more.

Much of the funding was not set to end until 2026.

In notices sent to health departments last week, agencies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the grants were no longer necessary and were being terminated for cause.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” the federal department said in a statement last week.

A spokesperson for the department said it does not comment on ongoing litigation.

The lawsuit says HHS terminated $11 billion in funding. Earlier reports said more than $12 billion in funding was cancelled, including $11.4 billion in funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and $1 billion from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, both of which are housed within HHS.

The more than $225 million in funding that Wisconsin expects to lose as a result of the cancellations is a slightly higher total than the estimate given by state officials last week.

In a statement Tuesday, Gov. Tony Evers again called the cuts reckless and pointed to the use of the funds for purposes beyond the COVID-19 pandemic itself.

“These cuts will hurt Wisconsin’s ability to combat fentanyl and the opioid epidemic, help folks in mental health crisis, and respond to future public health emergencies. I won’t stand for it,” he said in the statement.

Unspent COVID relief funding has long been a target of Republicans who criticized the nearly $5 trillion spent on pandemic relief and recovery as excessive.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, supports rescinding the funds and believes it is long overdue, his spokesperson Kiersten Pels told the Journal Sentinel.

"It’s time to focus on reducing spending and returning to a reasonable pre-pandemic level," said a statement provided by Pels.

The discontinued grants come in the wake of broad cost-cutting efforts by the Trump administration aimed at dismantling parts of the government and reducing its size, while also eliminating initiatives that don't align with the administration's views.

Last week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced plans to cut 10,000 employees at the federal agency, layoffs that got underway on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Those cuts are in addition to thousands of HHS workers who already agreed to Trump administration offers to leave voluntarily.

Grant cancellations lead to shut-downs of some programs

The grant cancellations have already had ripple effects across Wisconsin.

Mental Health America of Wisconsin announced that it would be forced to shut down Uplift Wisconsin, a mental health helpline, by the end of the week as a result of the cuts.

It was awarded a grant to help pay for part-time phone operators who man the helpline 12 hours a day. The helpline is run by certified peer specialists who understand what it's like to face mental health or drug use challenges.

Parachute House, a respite home for adults struggling with addiction, recovery or emotional distress, also announced it would close as a result of the HHS cuts.

The Southwest Suburban Health Department, which serves Greenfield, West Allis and West Milwaukee, reported that three of its grants were canceled, including one to improve vaccination rates in schools with relatively low rates.

That grant, through the state's Routine Immunizations through Community Engagement program, was awarded by the state using federal COVID-era supplements. The funds were meant to last through June.

RICE grants were designed to improve vaccination rates not only for COVID-19 but other contagious diseases in underserved and hard-to-reach communities. Vaccination rates among school children have been falling since the pandemic, raising concerns about the possibility of outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases.

Other cancelled grants include ones part of the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity program, which state officials used, in part, for data modernization and to improve public health labs.

The state Department of Health Services had about $165 million in unspent funds from this program that it expects to lose if the cancellations stand, according to a declaration made by Deputy Secretary Debra Standridge shared in a press release Tuesday. The funding was not expected to end until July 2026.

In her declaration, Standridge said the cancellation would force the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene to halt testing for certain illnesses and would likely cause slowdowns in local and state responses to public health threats.

It could also result in loss of staff who work with a disease reporting system called PHAVR, or Public Health Analysis Visualization and Reporting, she wrote.

Reporter Natalie Eilbert, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff, contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with additional information and to correct a typo in the dollar amount reportedly canceled from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is $11.4 billion.