Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

14. Department of Health and Human Services · Minor

End religious discrimination in Title X grant selections

Attempted

491 14. Department of Health and Human Services

“In addition, the Office of Population Affairs should eliminate religious discrimination in grant selections and guarantee the right of conscience and religious freedom of health care workers and participants in the Title X program.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued a memorandum opinion for the Director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights holding that HHS's use-based religious restrictions on federal funding discriminate against faith-based providers without a compelling interest and violate the Free Exercise Clause, and that such restrictions are presumptively unconstitutional. It is a binding legal foundation for ending religious discrimination in HHS grant selection, but it is addressed to OCR rather than to the Office of Population Affairs, does not mention Title X, and no OPA grant-selection change has followed.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The opinion (read in full as a PDF, 2026-08-25) works through 42 U.S.C. 604a (TANF charitable choice), 42 U.S.C. 290kk (SAMHSA), 42 U.S.C. 300x-65 (substance-use block grants) and 42 U.S.C. 9858l (CCDF). A search of its text for “Title X” returns 0.

  • HHS has a planned Title X rulemaking, RIN 0937-AA15 Compliance with Title X Statutory Program Integrity Requirements (Proposed Rule Stage, NPRM listed for 07/2026, not published). Its abstract is about statutory program-integrity requirements, not religious non-discrimination, so it is recorded as a lead: https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202510&RIN=0937-AA15

  • opa.hhs.gov’s Title X program-policy-notice index carries nothing later than OPA-PPN 2024-01.

  • The Office of Legal Counsel’s opinions page (justice.gov/olc/opinions) shows only the newest 25 opinions and refuses every search, so the catalog could not be searched.

  • EO 14332 grant-process sweep (2026-09-29). Executive Order 14332 (2025-08-07) puts every agency’s funding announcements and discretionary awards under senior-appointee review and a test of the President’s priorities. Under a rule settled on 2026-09-29, it counts only where an ask’s object is review, clearance or priority-alignment of an agency’s awards. This Quote’s object is religious discrimination in Title X grant selection and the conscience rights of Title X workers. The HHS Grants Policy Statement, Version 2.0 (effective 2025-10-01), now lists the Church, Coates-Snowe and Weldon provisions among the laws binding every recipient (recorded on #1391, where the ask is to tell grantees of those obligations). Listing statutes that already bind guarantees nothing new, and it says nothing about how OPA selects grantees. Status unchanged.

Action
eliminate
Object
religious discrimination in Title X grant selection
ID
1372