SF joins doctors group lawsuit demanding restoration of critical online health data

The city and county of San Francisco has joined a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s censorship of tens of thousands of webpages and datasets related to public health. 

The administration removed 80,000 webpages and numerous datasets in January that were hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Federal Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health and other health agencies. The information was related to public health initiatives including HIV, fertility, youth health, and how to develop clinical trials, among other information. 

Many of the webpages were restored on Feb. 11 with a bizarre note about gender ideology after the judge in the case issued a temporary restraining order against their removal as the case moved forward, responding to the plaintiffs’ assertion that the removal would impact public health and real-world treatments and clinical trials. 

The websites were removed after President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to censor information that the administration disagrees with making accessible to the public. 

The wordy order, Executive Order 14168, was titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” 

Public health consequences

The webpages and datasets were relied upon by physicians and public health agencies like the San Francisco Department of Public Health to make clinical decisions in hospitals, doctors’ offices and health clinics for a range of disease prevention and medical treatments, according to a press release from San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu’s office. 

The SFDPH uses the information to monitor public health threats and inform responses, conduct research, and inform real world treatments and interventions. 

According to the lawsuit, “the removal of the webpages and datasets creates a dangerous gap in the scientific data available to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, deprives physicians of resources that guide clinical practice, and takes away key resources for communicating and engaging with patients.” 

The lawsuit was first filed by Doctors for America, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization made up of 30,000 medical professionals and students formed in 2009 that advocates “to ensure that everyone had access to equitable, affordable, high-quality health care and the opportunity to lead a healthy life.” 

City Attorney David Chiu said the Trump administration was censoring accurate public health information for political reasons. 

“Only someone who has built a political movement based on lies and propaganda would be afraid of the public having access to scientific information,” Chiu said in a press release.  

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services referred questions about ongoing litigation to the U.S. Department of Justice, which did not respond to a press inquiry. 

The note about gender ideology that was appended to the webpages by the Trump administration said that the information on the pages was inaccurate, and that the administration was only republishing the information to comply with the court order. 

“Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female,” the note read. 

Biological sex is not binary, or strictly defined by two sexes, according to the Cleveland Clinic, which is not under government control. 

“People who are intersex have genitals, chromosomes or reproductive organs that don’t fit into a male/female sex binary,” it says on the Cleveland Clinic’s website. 

That fact was also highlighted by a federal judge in another case working its way through the federal courts challenging the administration’s ban on transgender military servicemembers. That ban was initiated by a separate Executive Order. 

“This executive order is premised on an assertion that’s not biologically correct,” the judge, Ana Reyes, said. 

“There are anywhere near 30 intersex examples. Anyone who doesn’t have XX or XY chromosomes is not just male or female, they’re intersex,” Reyes said. 

That also contradicts new guidance issued by U.S. Human and Health Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who had the agency publish similarly inaccurate statements asserting that biological sex is binary on the agency’s website. 

Disrupting health care response

While the administration’s note attached to the restored webpages focused on gender ideology, the San Francisco Department of Public Health maintained that the mass removal of the targeted webpages was interfering with daily monitoring and care decisions related to HIV, as well as missing or delayed information on bird flu (H5N1), measles, “and other high-threat and evolving outbreaks.” 

The SFDPH also uses the data to understand trends in substance abuse disorders and treatments, the federal complaint said. 

Doctors for America said its members use the data “to conduct groundbreaking research on infectious disease, factors associated with pediatric health, and structural determinants of health to inform local, state, and federal policy efforts.” 

The lawsuit, Doctors for America v. Office of Personnel Management, et al, is being heard by Judge John D. Bates in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 

In granting the temporary restraining order to prevent the web resources’ immediate removal, Judge Bates cited letters from medical organizations representing over 600,000 doctors that said the data was relied upon for “‘real-time clinical decision-making in hospitals, clinics and emergency departments across the country.’” 

He agreed with the organizations’ claim that restoring the data was “‘a public health imperative.’” 

“Finally,” Judge Bates wrote, “it bears emphasizing who ultimately bears the harm of defendants’ actions:  everyday Americans, and most acutely, underprivileged Americans, seeking healthcare.”