Federal health officials agreed to restore more than 100 public-facing health and science webpages and datasets after doctors' groups sued, a settlement the Washington State Medical Association (WSMA) announced this week.

Seattle Case Targets Trump Admin Health Data Deletions

As per an Associated Press report, the case, filed in Seattle, challenged the Trump administration's removal of information on topics including pregnancy risks, opioid-use disorder and the AIDS epidemic.

Plaintiffs said the takedowns began soon after President Donald Trump took office this year under executive directives targeting what the administration calls "gender ideology." The defendants included Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and officials under him.

In a statement responding to questions about the settlement, federal officials said to AP, "HHS remains committed to its mission of removing radical gender and DEI ideology from federal programs, subject to applicable law, to ensure taxpayer dollars deliver meaningful results for the American people."

HHS Agrees To Restore Deleted Sites And Data

WSMA, joined by groups such as the Vermont Medical Society and the Washington State Nurses Association, said HHS agreed to return the affected sites "to the state they were in" before the removals.

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"We expect the sites will be restored in the coming weeks," a spokesperson for the Washington State doctors' group, Graham Short, said.

As of last week, in a related Washington, D.C., case brought by Doctors for America, 167 sites had been restored and 33 remained under review, court filings show.

Doctors Decry Overreach Amid Broader HHS Policy Fight

Doctors framed the rollback as a politicized disruption to routine clinical practice. WSMA president John Bramhall called the purge an "egregious example of government overreach." He added, "This was trusted health information that vanished in a blink of an eye -- resources that, among other things, physicians rely on to manage patients' health conditions and overall care."

The settlement arrives amid escalating turmoil around HHS leadership and policy. Lawmakers from both parties have pressed Kennedy over agency shake-ups and vaccine policy, while more than 1,000 current and former HHS workers reportedly urged him to resign.

HHS, meanwhile, has pushed parallel initiatives to strip "gender ideology" from federally funded programs. In late August, Reuters states that the department told 46 states and territories to remove references to "gender ideology" from Personal Responsibility Education Program materials or risk losing funding, part of a broader campaign aligned with White House orders to unwind DEI policies across agencies.

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