Court orders the CDC and FDA to restore deleted web pages related to gender identity

US District Judge John D. Bates has ordered (PDF) the Center for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration to restore the web pages and resources they had previously removed to comply with President Trump's executive order related to gender ideology. Bates gave the agencies until February 11, 11:59 PM Eastern time, to comply. As of this writing, the CDC website on "Transgender and Gender Diverse Persons" is already back online with a note up top that says the CDC's website "is being modified to comply with President Trump's Executive Orders."

The judge's decision is part of a temporary restraining order that he has granted as requested by the Doctors for America. Represented by Public Citizen, the non-profit organization sued the CDC (PDF), the FDA and the Department of Health in February. It also sued the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which issued the memo for the pages' removal. As The Washington Post notes, the memo ordered agency heads to "end all agency programs that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology." 

In response, the CDC and FDA removed a number of web pages covering a wide variety of topics. In its lawsuit, Doctors for America said the pages that were removed provided healthcare workers with treatment guidance and important datasets necessary for research and for formulating appropriate public health responses. The pages contained resources for HIV monitoring, contraception, assisted reproductive technologies like IVF, health risks for youths, social vulnerability and environmental justice. In addition, the organization pointed out that the agency didn't provide any notice before removing those pages. 

The non-profit organization gave some specific examples in its lawsuit. Dr. Reshma Ramachandran, who has a research program at Yale School of Medicine, said that the CDC's removal of its resources about contraceptives and STIs caused delays in her "patients' access to appropriate contraception." Meanwhile, a Dr. Stephanie Liou said the the pages' removal impeded her ability to formulate a quick and appropriate response to a chlamydia outbreak in her high school, as her employers didn't have access to "many expensive clinical resources." Doctors of America accused the CDC and the FDA of violating the Paperwork Reduction Act that requires officials to "ensure that the public has timely and equitable access to the agency’s public information."

In addition to bringing back the pages that were removed, the agencies were also ordered to restore any resources that were modified to their original state by February 14. The resources that were brought back online will remain available while the non-profit org's lawsuit is ongoing. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/court-orders-the-cdc-and-fda-to-restore-deleted-web-pages-related-to-gender-identity-133008251.html?src=rss https://www.engadget.com/science/court-orders-the-cdc-and-fda-to-restore-deleted-web-pages-related-to-gender-identity-133008251.html?src=rss