Maine Family Planning has joined a federal lawsuit filed this week against the Trump administration for freezing $65.8 million in federal health care grants, including nearly $2 million headed to Maine.

The Title X funding pays for reproductive health care, including birth control, sexually-transmitted infection screenings and treatment, cancer screenings and other services. Title X funding is not used to pay for abortions.

The Trump administration cited diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI programs, in its rationale for stopping the payments.

A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association in Washington, D.C., argues that the Trump administration failed to follow federal law by “providing no reasonable explanation or justification for its decision to select these grantees for fund withholding and investigation.”

The suit says that grant recipients were targeted “based on statements that align with the requirements of the Title X program.”

The family planning centers provide health care to underserved populations, including rural residents and minorities. Maine Family Planning expected to receive $1.9 million in federal Title X funding, which it would distribute to 63 health centers, including its own clinics, those operated by Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and other community health clinics.

George Hill, president and CEO of Maine Family Planning, said the nonprofit emphasized health equity in its strategic plan and on its website, and noted that providing health care to those in need is its mission. For many people who use the clinics, it may be the only primary care they receive, and the clinics often discover medical conditions that need treating from the screenings that they conduct, Hill said.

“We are not going to scrub our website,” Hill said in an interview with the Press Herald Friday. “We are going to move forward.”

Hill said the Trump administration is creating a “false pretext” of civil rights violations to deny funding. The lawsuit states that the Trump administration is claiming “diversity, equity and inclusion” policies are in violation of federal civil rights laws.

According to a U.S. Health and Human Services statement, the agency is “conducting this evaluation to ensure these entities are in full compliance with federal law and applicable grant terms, and to ensure responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”

In part because federal funding is unreliable, Maine Family Planning and Planned Parenthood of Northern New England are requesting $6 million in state funding in a bill that’s pending before the Legislature. It passed the Maine House and Senate, and the bill’s fate now depends on whether the funding is approved during the appropriations process.

Maine would be one of at least seven states to lose all Title X funding if the lawsuit doesn’t prevail and the funding freeze becomes permanent. The others include California, Hawaii, Mississippi, Montana and Utah.

Lisa Margulies, vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, said in a written statement that “the Trump administration is ignoring their own process and procedures solely to appease extremists who want to ban abortion, and they’re willing to restrict access to birth control, cancer screenings and more to do it.”

While Title X funding does not pay for abortions, it has been challenged because it supports health care organizations that also perform abortions.

Planned Parenthood and Maine Family Planning also lost out on Title X funding during the first Trump administration when a “gag rule” went into effect prohibiting the nonprofits from making abortion referrals for some patients. Rather than comply with a rule that went against their mission, the nonprofits exited the program, but reentered when the Biden administration removed the gag rule.