Minnesota joined 20 other states on Tuesday in suing the Trump administration over a new rule that would bar federally funded family planning clinics from referring women to abortion providers.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison joined the group of Democratic state attorneys general for the second federal legal challenge to the new policy in as many days.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Oregon, alleges that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is imposing an "illegal gag rule" by restricting providers like Planned Parenthood from offering patients information about abortion services.
The rule, published Monday, would end Planned Parenthood's participation in the federal Title X program, which provided $2.2 million to Minnesota last year for family planning and health services to low-income patients.
More than 55,000 patients received services funded by the program in Minnesota, more than half of whom were at or below the federal poverty line.
"Now the Trump administration is illegally trying to gag providers from offering women medically-sound, unbiased, and affordable health care, which will impose burdens on everyone in our state, especially in greater Minnesota," Ellison said in a statement Tuesday.
Planned Parenthood has 10 clinics in greater Minnesota, whose communities Ellison said already experienced shortages of primary health care providers.
The lawsuit comes a day after California's attorney general filed a separate challenge to the new rule and is expected to be among the first of numerous legal challenges seeking to block the measure from taking effect.
