Kansas City sues RFK Jr. over cuts to local vaccination, disease testing efforts
Kansas City is suing President Donald Trump’s administration after federal officials abruptly cut public health grants in March, disrupting local efforts to boost infectious disease testing and promote vaccination.
The city – along with four other local governments across the country and a labor union – filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the agency he leads.
Kansas City and other plaintiffs contend the grant terminations caused immediate, ongoing harm. The loss of the funding threatens their ability to protect the health of residents and makes them vulnerable to imminent public health threats like the ongoing measles outbreaks across the country, including in southwest Kansas.
“At a time when measles threatens our young people and Kansas Citians in need of lifesaving cures see federal research funding slashed, I believe it’s important that we as cities and people stand up for common sense and public health in the courts,” Mayor Quinton Lucas said in a statement.
“I am proud to join other mayors and cities who will continue working to save lives in Kansas City and around our country while the federal government plays politics.”
Columbus, Ohio; Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee; and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees are also suing. Harris County, Texas – which includes the Houston area – is the lead plaintiff.
HHS’s decision to withdraw a wave of grants for local health departments at the end of March sent some Kansas City-area agencies scrambling and in some instances forced agencies to lay off staff. Jackson County Public Health cut a team of three who were focused on detecting and intervening to stop communicable diseases, for instance.
At the Kansas City Public Health Department, the affected grants had a combined total value of more than $8 million. It’s unclear how much of the grants hadn’t been spent at the time HHS terminated them.
The complaint says Kansas City’s plan to test for infectious diseases at the city level “have been frustrated” by the loss of grant funding. Currently, the city must rely on county facilities and must send results to Jefferson City, which delays results. The city was moving to complete the purchase of lab equipment when its grants were cut.
“Now it cannot purchase this equipment, which renders useless its significant prior work on this project,” the complaint says.
Kansas City also lost funding for its adult vaccination program, which includes offering vaccinations for Hepatitis B and a variety of other diseases. Kansas City has also canceled its public health education programs that trained workplaces on minimizing the spread of illness.
HHS declined to comment on the lawsuit.
HHS announced a wave of grant cancellations on March 24. Termination notices sent to Kansas City-area health departments and nonprofits included boilerplate explanations that cited the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While public health leaders were using some of the funding specifically for COVID-19 vaccinations, the dollars were often supporting broader public health activities.
“This funding was never meant to be temporary—it was a critical investment in our country’s ability to respond to current and future health threats,” said Marvia Jones, director of the Kansas City Health Department, said in a statement.
“Cutting these programs now is not just shortsighted, it’s dangerous. Kansas City is standing up because our residents deserve consistent, reliable public health protections—not uncertainty driven by bureaucratic decisions that ignore Congressional intent.”
Kansas City would potentially still have its health grant funding if Missouri had joined a previous lawsuit over the cuts. Earlier this month, a federal judge blocked HHS from terminating grants in 23 states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general.
The decision only applied to the states that sued, however. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, has cast himself as a Trump ally and has generally not challenged the new administration’s actions after frequently filing lawsuits against former President Joe Biden’s administration.
This story was originally published April 25, 2025 at 10:53 AM.
