July 25, 2025
Over the past two years, Public Health Law Watch has been tracking litigation that challenges efforts to improve health equity. Below is the Summary of a recently posted report on our findings, “Litigation Challenging Governmental and Health Institution Efforts to Address Health Equity from January 2024 to May 2025”, which was prepared with the support of Change Lab Solutions. A full copy of the Report and its Appendix can be found here.
Between January 2024 and May 2025, 30 lawsuits were identified that challenged governmental and health institution (e.g., hospitals, medical schools) interventions to improve health equity. The identified lawsuits focused on two topic areas: challenges to rules and guidance issued by the Biden Administration to expand civil rights protections for gender identity and sexual orientation (19 lawsuits); and challenges to programs, services, or advisory groups with racial or gender eligibility preferences or requirements (11 lawsuits).
In the 19 gender identity and sexual orientation lawsuits relating to Biden Administration rules or guidance, judicial decisions on the merits were issued in 13, with the rules and guidance enjoined in all of them. In three other lawsuits, some or all of the rules and guidance are not being implemented because of an injunction in another lawsuit or because the Trump Administration rescinded the Biden Administration’s rules and guidance. Two other lawsuits are still pending, and one was dismissed. In the 11 lawsuits against programs, services, or advisory groups with racial or gender eligibility preferences or requirements, seven lawsuits have been dismissed, with six of the seven being dismissed because the race or gender eligibility preferences or requirements were removed. The other four lawsuits are still pending.
This report summarizes the process used to search for lawsuits, the claims made in the lawsuits, judicial decisions about the claims, and limitations. The appendix includes information about the types of claims brought within each lawsuit and provides individual lawsuit summaries.
Please click the link above to access the full report on our website.
Our newsletters will also be taking a short break during August, and we will be back in September to share more litigation tracking updates. We look forward to seeing you then.