A judge criticized the Department of Health and Human Services for citing nonexistent scientific evidence or potentially AI-generated citations to support sweeping changes to federal teen pregnancy prevention programs.
The Trump administration had said money Congress appropriated for such programs should avoid encouraging teen sexual activity and be used only for programs that promote abstinence and “body literacy.” The administration’s changes were challenged after HHS cut tens of millions in grants.
In his opinion granting a preliminary injunction as the lawsuit continues, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper called the changes “likely arbitrary and capricious” and said the government had failed to provide sufficient evidence for its policy. He wrote that grant solicitations for the program “(remarkably) reference public health studies that appear either not to exist or not to support the propositions for which they are cited — a hallmark of AI-generated citations.” In seven cited articles, two appeared to be entirely made up and three others did not exist in the journals they were attributed to, according to Cooper, a judge who was appointed to the federal court in Washington, D.C., in 2014.
Last year, The Washington Post revealed that citations in the White House’s sweeping “MAHA Report” had been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies.
The decision is the latest in a lawsuit filed in July by a coalition of two counties in Minnesota and Washington, a sex education advocacy nonprofit and Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, which spans Iowa, Nebraska and nearby states.
The plaintiffs are challenging new funding conditions, including abstinence-only mandates and prohibitions on “gender ideology.”
HHS did not answer The Post’s request for comment.
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