Court Cases

Center for Reproductive Rights and National Women’s Law Center v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

  • Case Status Active
  • Last Updated
  • Issue
    • Abortion
    • Contraception
    • Maternal Health
  • Place
    • United States

The Center for Reproductive Rights and the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) filed suit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for refusing to release records related to a new division within the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) dedicated exclusively to enforcing refusal of care laws.



HHS has refused to release information about how this new division operates, how it is allocating resources, whether and how its decision making is influenced by outside groups, and why it was needed in the first place. The Center and NWLC made the original Freedom of Information Act request in January 2018, which HHS has effectively ignored.



Plaintiff(s): The Center for Reproductive Rights, the National Women’s Law Center 



Attorney(s): Covington & Burling LLP


Status:

Plaintiffs filed a complaint in federal court on July 19, 2018 after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services failed to reply to a FOIA request by the required deadline. The federal government completed a search for records relevant to our request and began producing documents on a rolling basis.

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