Judge rules that he has the power to control and edit government agencies' websites
/“and the white house cafeteria! i demand soup be put back on the menu! And none of that spicy stuff either!”
David Strom, HotAir
Insane: Judge Orders Gender Ideology Back Into HHS, CDC, and FDA
Washington — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration to restore webpages and data that had been scrubbed in compliance with President Trump's executive order on gender ideology while litigation moves forward.
U.S. District Judge John Bates agreed to grant a temporary restraining order sought by the group Doctors for America, which argued that its members used the websites when treating patients and conducting research. The nonprofit organization said that the removal of the webpages by the Department of Health and Human Services and its components violated federal law.
Bates found that the challengers were likely to succeed in their claims that the Department Health and Human Services, CDC and FDA acted unlawfully when they stripped medical information from public-facing websites.
"It bears emphasizing who ultimately bears the harm of defendants' actions: everyday Americans, and most acutely, underprivileged Americans, seeking healthcare," he wrote. Citing declarations from two doctors filed in the case, Bates said if they "cannot provide these individuals the care they need (and deserve) within the scheduled and often limited time frame, there is a chance that some individuals will not receive treatment, including for severe, life-threatening conditions. The public thus has a strong interest in avoiding these serious injuries to the public health."
Strom: Doctors for America was part of Barack Obama's campaign--originally Doctors for Obama--and its mission is to promote every left-leaning cause you can imagine in health care. It has pushed for gun control, defunding the police, and closing down prisons during the pandemic.
Doctors for America filed its lawsuit against the health agencies on Feb. 4, alleging they violated a federal law that governs the agency rulemaking process and another that requires federal agencies to ensure the public has "timely and equitable access" to their public information.
The group argued in court papers that its members relied on the scrubbed information to provide treatment, conduct research and inform public health responses on topics like youth risk behaviors, adolescent health and HIV.
Doctors for America said some of its members were already experiencing challenges as a result of losing access to information from the CDC. In one instance, it said a Chicago-based physician who works at a clinic serving low-income immigrant families could not consult the CDC's website for resources on how to address a chlamydia outbreak at a local high school and bolster STI testing and prevention efforts.
Another doctor, who is also a researcher at the Yale School of Medicine, said in a declaration that she lost the ability to consult CDC resources about prescribing treatments.
Strom: Anybody with an ounce of sense knows that no doctor consults any of these web pages for advice on how to treat patients. The idea is absurd on its face.