PRACTITIONER BLOG
Read our analyses of developments in Impact Litigation and stay current on class action law
Families Win Key Protections After DOJ Targets Records of Transgender Patients at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
On January 22, 2026, transgender patients of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and their families achieved an important victory to protect their private medical information from unlawful intrusion by the federal government, defeating an administrative subpoena demanding medical records containing information about the identities and private medical records of transgender youth patients.
A Critical Win for Head Start’s Children and Families
Earlier this month, the Impact Fund and co-counsel including the ACLU won a court order on behalf of Plaintiff Head Start associations and parents’ groups protecting the Head Start program from attacks by the Trump administration. Head Start provides early education, health services, and family support to more than 800,000 children from low-income families, children with disabilities, children learning English, Native American children, and others. The court’s order blocks the Trump administration from cutting Head Start staff and offices, limiting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility activities within the program, and putting the program’s federal funding at risk.
Trump v. CASA, Inc. Prompts Fresh Look at Class Action Litigation
Rule 23 class actions made headlines earlier this summer with the Supreme Court’s June decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc. The case is substantively about birthright citizenship and the validity of Executive Order No. 14160, which attempts to eliminate birthright citizenship in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, federal statute, and decades of legal precedent.
But the appeal heard by the Supreme Court in May wasn’t about birthright citizenship at all. Instead, it asked whether federal judges were empowered to order defendants to modify or stop unlawful behavior, policies, or practices generally and not just for the parties in the lawsuit. These types of orders are known as national or universal injunctions, even though their scope isn’t necessarily nationwide or universal.
Impact Fund & Co-Counsel Challenge New HHS Directive Excluding Families from Head Start Based on Immigration Status
On July 14, 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a new directive that makes immigration status an eligibility requirement for Head Start for the first time in the program’s sixty-year history. On July 21, we filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to stop the Immigrant Exclusion Directive from going into effect.
The Trump Administration estimates that the Immigrant Exclusion Directive excludes at least 500,000 children from Head Start.
Impact Fund & Co-Counsel Seek Injunction to Halt Trump Administration’s Dismantling of Head Start
In May, a coalition of Head Start associations and parent organizations, represented by the Impact Fund, ACLU, Crowell & Moring LLP, and Feldesman Leifer LLP, filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s attacks on the Head Start program.
The program provides comprehensive early education services to over 800,000 children and families nationwide each year.