Censored Medical Research Restored to Federal Website

Nearly one year after researchers sued the federal government for removing articles from its patient safety website for allegedly promoting “gender ideology,” the government agreed Wednesday to permanently restore the papers and not remove any more titles for the same reasons. 

As soon as President Donald Trump took office last January, he issued an executive order instructing federal agencies to “remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology.” 

The editors of the government-operated Patient Safety Net, a website that hosts case reports and other medical information, identified multiple articles they believed violated the order. Two articles were subsequently removed after the authors declined to change their work. 

According to court filings and a news release from the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued the case against the federal government, the articles in question included: 

In March, Royce and Schiff filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Office of Personnel Management, arguing that the government’s removal of the research violated both the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act. 

In May, a federal district court issued a temporary injunction restoring the files. The settlement Wednesday makes that decision final.

“This agreement is a win for the First Amendment and for public health,” Scarlet Kim, senior staff attorney with the ACLU, said in a news release. “The government cannot censor medical research because it acknowledges the existence of transgender people. Research free from ideological interference by the government promotes rigor, objectivity, and scientific value, which benefits everyone.”