By Nate Raymond and Daniel Wiessner
(Reuters) -A federal appeals court on Wednesday refused for now to allow U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to proceed with a planned overhaul of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which would involve reorganizing several agencies and firing thousands of employees.
A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to lift a federal judge’s injunction secured by several Democratic-led states. They had challenged a plan U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced in March to carry out a large-scale reorganization of the department.
The 1st Circuit rejected the Trump administration’s claims that the states could not show they would be immediately harmed if the injunction is lifted pending