Federal Judge Blocks Trump Cuts To Black Lung Screening Program

A federal judge in Charleston has blocked President Donald Trump’s attempts to cut a coal worker health monitoring program focused on an black lung disease.

U.S. District Judge Irene Berger issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday against the Department of Health and Human Services.

HHS had issued termination notices to the staff of the Coal Worker Health Surveillance Program based in Morgantown and placed them on administrative leave.

Berger said in a 31-page decision that only Congress could make changes to a program it authorized and that shutting down the program would cause irreparable harm to coal miners facing black lung disease.

The health surveillance program screens coal miners for the progressive disease and approves their applications for job transfers that can protect their health.

Harry Wiley, a Kanawha County coal miner who was diagnosed with early stage black lung, brought the lawsuit against HHS and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month.

Wiley and affected HHS workers testified in Berger’s courtroom last week.

She ordered Kennedy to respond within 20 days that HHS is following her order.

She rejected as insufficient the government’s evidence that it planned to reorganize the program and continue its functions. The government’s attorney presented a press release and a fact sheet as evidence.

Berger was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia by President Barack Obama in 2009.

U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said Tuesday that she’d spoken with Kennedy by phone and that 100 workers would return to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Morgantown permanently.

“The health and safety of our West Virginia workers, including our miners, is of the utmost importance and I will always advocate for their wellbeing,” she said in a statement.

Capito has been pushing for Kennedy and Trump to reverse the cuts to the coal worker health monitoring program, which is under NIOSH.