After being forced by a court order to restore certain pages about gender and diversity to government websites, the Trump administration has added a note to the top of those pages saying “Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate, and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female.”
For example, a page on Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s website (SAMHSA) linking to a survey about behavioral health and substance abuse among gay, lesbian, bisexual, or others nonheterosexual adolescents, now includes the note. In full, the note reads:
The same note now also appears on U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) site page for a June 2024 “guidance document” for “Diversity Action Plans to Improve Enrollment of Participants from Underrepresented Populations in Clinical Studies,” as well as an January 2025 guidance document for the “Study of Sex Differences in the Clinical Evaluation of Medical Products.”
The note essentially seems like a way for the current administration to legally comply with a court order while still signaling that it entirely rejects any government funded or endorsed research or policy sympathetic to LGBTQ+ community and diversity, equity, and inclusion, which Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have been purging from government websites.
Earlier this week, we reported that a federal judge ordered the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control, and Food and Drug Administration to restore several webpages they removed as a result of Trump’s executive order attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion. The agencies were given until 11:59 p.m. on February 11 to restore the webpages.
The court ordered the administration to restore the webpages “to their versions as of January 30, 2025, meaning they were supposed to revert the webpages to what they looked like on January 30 with no changes. The versions that have been restored now have this additional disclaimer.
A joint status update filed Thursday by lawyers for the Department of Justice and the Public Citizen Litigation Group says that the government has provided the court with a list of websites that it has restored, though the list of websites is not available. It also specifically says that the government is refusing to restore the website reproductiverights.gov: “Defendants have objected to restoring the website ‘reproductiverights.gov.’ Plaintiff’s counsel is conferring with their client,” it says.
“Plaintiff’s lists include websites from Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) components other than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. The parties disagree about whether such websites properly fall within the scope of the Order. However, given Plaintiff’s forthcoming amended complaint and to avoid further emergency motions practice, Defendants will restore those websites consistent with the Order,” it adds.
