NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is leading more than a dozen states in a lawsuit against a federal agency for a rule they said harms their ability to investigate certain cases.
In the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee in Knoxville, Skrmetti said the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has imposed limitations on when “reproductive health care” information can be disclosed without someone’s consent that infringe on the states’ abilities to obtain certain records permitted by law.
The case centers on an HHS rule imposed after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org. Supreme Court case. After Dobbs was decided, the HHS sought to modify a 2000 privacy rule that outlined how health information could be obtained.
The 2000 rule allowed for health records to be obtained by law enforcement for “a legitimate law enforcement inquiry,” so long as the information sought was “specific and limited in scope” and “de-identified information could not reasonably be used.”
After the Dobbs decision, the HHS imposed new protections for “reproductive health care” information. The complaint alleged the HHS placed “new barriers to state investigators’ ability to obtain” that information. Additionally, the complaint said HHS redefined “reproductive health care” broadly, prompting “substantial opposition” from a coalition of 19 states — including those named in the suit — among more than 25,000 comments on the proposed rule.
Further, the HHS rule added a requirement that any disclosure of the protected health information include a written attestation that met certain requirements, placing another barrier between the states and the information sought.
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Despite the opposition, the complaint reads, HHS finalized the rule and “expressly acknowledged” that the rule would “limit States’ ability to enforce laws regulating aspects of HHS’s ‘reproductive health care’ rubric.”
The rule went into effect June 25, 2024, but healthcare providers had until Dec. 23, 2024 to fully comply with the new rule, according to the complaint.
The states claim the HHS rule prohibits states with prohibitions on abortion from using reproductive health information to conduct a criminal, civil or administrative investigation related to reproductive health care as well as imposing any criminal, civil or administrative liability for such investigations.
“The slapdash HIPAA rule rushed out the door by the administration for political purposes is both unlawful and impractical,” Skrmetti said in a social media post announcing the suit. “The admin’s efforts to hamstring enforcement of conservative state laws have created significant obstacles for everyday investigation of misbehaving health care providers, including our ongoing investigation of a Nashville IVF clinic.”
That clinic, according to the complaint, is the subject of ongoing consumer protection litigation concerning a physician and his fertility clinic’s business practices. Because the HHS rule has been in effect since late December 2024, the state has been unable to obtain “relevant patient data” because it falls under the now more broad definition of “reproductive health care” information.
The suit asks the court to declare the rule unlawful, to temporarily halt enforcement while the case is litigated and to permanently block the rule from taking effect.
