Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha is leading up a coalition of a dozen US state attorney generals in a lawsuit against the US Department of Health and Human Services, arguing that President Trump’s anti-transgender executive order to withhold funds is illegal, according to a report in the Boston Globe.

Reports the Boston Globe:

Filed last week in US District Court in Providence, the 61-page complaint alleges HHS has required states, public universities, health agencies, hospitals, and other organizations to certify they will follow Title IX — the law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal funding — as well as Trump’s January 2025 executive order recognizing two sexes, male and female, to receive hundreds of billions of dollars in health, education, and research funding.

According to the lawsuit, the grants “fund essential programs such as training for medical personnel, cutting edge research, and the treatment and prevention of diseases.”

The cohort of attorneys general maintain their states have “long certified their compliance with Title IX,” and that the lawsuit is challenging “HHS’s grafting of an executive order” into the law. After enacting the new policy in October, HHS has continued to impose the condition “despite orders from three courts enjoining and vacating it as unlawful,” the lawsuit states.

“A year into this Administration and they continue to impose illegal conditions on federal funding; a colossal waste of time and resources on their part since we have yet to lose a case of this kind,” Neronha, who has led or signed onto 47 lawsuits against the Trump administration within the last year, said in a statement.

Neronha co-leads the latest lawsuit with attorneys general from California, New York, and Oregon and is joined by others in Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Vermont, and Washington.

Read the complete Boston Globe story here.

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