A coalition of civil rights organizations filed a lawsuit Monday against the Department of Health and Human Services, accusing the agency of stonewalling a Freedom of Information Act request for records tied to the Trump administration's controversial freeze on billions of dollars in federal childcare assistance.
The suit, lodged by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Illinois, the ACLU of Colorado, the National Women's Law Center, and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, targets HHS's failure to produce documents related to the funding cutoff affecting five Democratic-led states: California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York.
At the heart of the dispute is a March FOIA request seeking internal communications between federal officials and Nick Shirley, a conservative influencer whose viral 2025 YouTube video alleged widespread fraud among Somali-run childcare centers in Minnesota. The administration cited those claims as justification for freezing funds.
“The public deserves to know why the Trump administration is restricting access to critical child care and family assistance funds that hundreds of thousands of families rely on,” said Linda Morris, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Women's Rights Project, in a statement. “These restrictions are a threat to the very programs that help families stay afloat and enable parents to work, attend school, and care for their children. We are going to court to ensure the public gets the transparency that federal law requires.”
The complaint notes that HHS acknowledged receiving the FOIA request on March 11 but has provided no records more than four months later. In April, the agency told the groups that processing was delayed due to a transition to a new data system and organizational changes, according to the lawsuit.
The legal action comes amid broader tensions over federal funding. The Trump administration has also held back $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota over similar fraud allegations, as reported by The World Signal. Meanwhile, House Democrats have united against a GOP stopgap funding bill, citing concerns over Iran war authorization and border security.
The lawsuit asks the court to compel HHS to promptly process the FOIA request and release all nonexempt documents. “The Freedom of Information Act was created so that organizations and ordinary citizens could hold the U.S. government accountable,” said Tim Macdonald, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado, in a statement. “We will fight to ensure that the executive branch follows federal law and gives the public the transparency it deserves.”
The case underscores a pattern of the administration using fraud allegations to justify funding freezes in Democratic states, raising questions about political motivations. The plaintiffs argue that the secrecy around the decision-making process undermines public trust and violates federal transparency laws.
