Nashville plans legal action against Trump admin — again — as cuts hit Health Department
Metro Nashville Health Department could lose up to eight grant-funded staff positions due to the budget reductions, officials said. Last week, Nashville officials joined a Southern Environmental Law Center and the Public Rights Project lawsuit against the Trump adminstration's Inflation Reduction Act cuts.
Metro Director of Law Wally Dietz announced the looming legal action during Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell's weekly media roundtable Friday morning.
Dietz said he believes the claw-back is unconstitutional and called it a 'gigantic issue.' Dietz said Nashville is actively working with other cities that have been similarly affected and 'fully intends' on filing a lawsuit to protect those grants.
'There is a procedure for the administration to go through if they want to impound these funds,' Dietz said. 'They could invoke the procedures of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and go to Congress and try to get these monies rescinded. That's the lawful way to do it — the way they chose is not lawful or constitutional.'
O'Connell, for his part, said he's less worried about further legal action making Nashville a bigger target for federal cuts than he is about Metro losing access to funds 'we have legal rights to.'
'Frankly, I don't know that it can get much worse,' Dietz added. 'That's not a flippant comment — that's an evaluation of where we stand with the federal government right now.'
O'Connell told reporters Friday that these cuts directly affect the Metro Health Department, where up to eight grant-funded staff positions will be lost. O'Connell said it's the first example to date of federal cuts leading directly to Metro Nashville jobs being eliminated.
O'Connell said two of those staffers, for example, were working on finding a use for more than 100 housing pods, also called pallet shelters, that Metro purchased for an estimated $1.2 million in 2021 using COVID relief funds.
'We're working to identify other Metro employees to help pick up the process and support identifying a partner to roll this out as emergency housing, but this will delay any use of those shelters,' O'Connell said.
The cuts will also affect the Health Department's measles response. While O'Connell said there's yet to be a case reported in Davidson County, cases have begun popping up in Middle Tennessee.
Joanna Shaw-KaiKai, Metro Health Department's medical services director, said Friday that the department has been preparing for a potential local increase in measles cases for several weeks. In part, that work's been running through a 'strike team' of department personnel which has been holding vaccination clinics at area middle schools.
But the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity grant funding was one of three awards rescinded Tuesday, Shaw-KaiKai said. The Health Department has worked with Metro Finance in the time since to restore that work, but Shaw-KaiKai said any disruption is a significant one when over 60% of the health department's work is funded by grants.
'The abrupt end of the funding meant several days of planned vaccine clinics were lost,' Shaw-KaiKai said. 'Disruptions like these can cause real public health issues, as any one person who is unvaccinated is more susceptible to contracting and spreading the disease they would have otherwise been protected against.'
Metro has already taken legal action against the Trump administration in the past week. Last Friday, Nashville signed on to a lawsuit led by the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Public Rights Project seeking to halt the Trump administration's federal funding freeze on Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act grants.
Nashville is one of six cities included in the suit, along with 11 nonprofits. Each of them have been awarded federal grant funds, either as direct recipients or as sub-grantees, through an act of Congress. For Nashville, the lawsuit covers about $14 million in awarded funds that are likely to be rescinded entirely.
Most recently, the two nonprofits leading the suit filed a motion for preliminary injunction, a type of temporary relief that, if granted, preserves the status quo before any ruling on a final judgment.
Dietz said he's optimistic about that motion succeeding, but also indicated that he's ready to escalate if the Trump administration ignores a judge's order — both by filing a motion of contempt and even by taking the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
'This is a critical time in our country's history — we'll see where we go,' Dietz said. 'Will the court stand up and defend the law? Will the Supreme Court make it clear that the president does not have the authority to ignore lawful orders of federal courts? There will be a clash. It is already, in my opinion, a constitutional crisis because the Trump administration has determined they are not obligated to follow orders of federal courts.'
Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him at ahornbostel@tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Metro Nashville considers suing Trump admin following CDC grant cuts
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