This story was originally published by The Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice. Sign up for The Imprint’s free newsletters here.
Lawyers for a Minnesota county have accused the Trump administration of unlawfully diverting as much as $86 million in federal funds for teen pregnancy prevention to a private consulting firm they say has no relevant experience.
As first reported by NPR, Guidehouse, the Virginia-based company that received the contract, has ties to top health agency officials in the Trump administration.
In a legal filing last week, attorneys for Hennepin County allege that the government’s award was conducted out of public view with unusual haste, breaking from routine practice.
They also allege Guidehouse “does not have any past performance or other experience” implementing Teen Pregnancy Prevention programs. Guidehouse describes itself as “an AI-led professional services firm dedicated to shaping the future” and has no mention on its website of teen pregnancy prevention projects.
The county’s Oct. 14 court filing describes the award decision as “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, contrary to law, and in excess of its statutory authority.”
The named defendant is the United States government, including its Department of Health and Human Services, where the roughly $100 million Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program is housed, and the Administration for Children and Families (ACF).
Spokespeople for federal agencies, Hennepin County and Guidehouse did not respond to The Imprint’s requests for comment, or declined to comment on the recent litigation.
Since August 2025, the Administration for Children and Family’s principal deputy assistant secretary has been Cody Inman. His LinkedIn profile states he was an associate director at Guidehouse for more than four and a half years before that.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department said Inman was “recused from this decision-making process.”
A public listing on a federal spending database does not mention the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program award by name. But it shows Guidehouse receiving a maximum of $86.1 million contract for “ACF adolescent social and youth engagement services.”
Hennepin County’s legal filing makes the connection to the federal teen pregnancy program at length, detailing a “Request for Quotations” the plaintiffs obtained that was not made public. The government’s request sought “to establish a national resource center to deliver evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs.” Applicants had “less than a week to submit quotations,” and the federal government made an award decision in 36 hours, the county alleges.
The county’s “bid protest,” filed last week in the Court of Federal Claims, argues the federal government only distributed the requests for bids to a handful of government contractors, a process that violated four federal statutes covering transparency and fair competition rules, as well as the 2009 legislation that created the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.
This year’s prevention funds first came under public scrutiny this summer. In June, the Trump administration issued termination letters to dozens of public and private organizations with ongoing Teen Pregnancy Prevention grants and expertise in the topic, including Hennepin County. The federal government’s rationale was “misalignment with agency priority, specifically normalizing sexual activity for minors.” That re-direction echoes some conservative groups’ strong objections to pregnancy prevention programs that stray from an abstinence-only message.
The termination letters sparked criticism among providers and Democrats. In July, Hennepin County filed a joint lawsuit with a Des Moines, Iowa Planned Parenthood and other groups. That separate legal action is pending.
Then, last month, California Rep. Judy Chu co-authored a letter to the Trump administration with dozens of fellow Democrats demanding the funding be restored. And this week, in an e-mailed statement, she called the “massive” new consulting contract “deeply concerning.”
Typically, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program provides roughly $100 million in grants, authorized by Congress, to local service providers and agencies like Hennepin County’s public health department. That $100 million includes 75% for implementation of evidence-based programs nationwide, and another quarter for research on innovative practices. Under the law, some grants must be targeted to groups with high teen pregnancy rates, including youth in foster care and juvenile justice systems.
A social work researcher who is familiar with federal spending on child welfare and related fields said she was concerned about what the new award to Guidehouse could signal about future decisions.
“There are some agencies that didn’t exist prior to the start of the current administration that came together quickly and now are getting many contracts,” said Angelique Day, a University of Washington social work professor. “The influx of agencies that do not have the expertise to do the work does not bode well for the field.”
In its latest legal filing on these grants, Hennepin County’s attorneys say the local public health department has suffered “competitive prejudice and irreparable harm,” including “the loss of the opportunity to compete” for a valuable contract. They ask the court to permanently block the Guidehouse contract and to order the federal government to redo the funding application process.
They also tout the benefits of prior local spending, which funded the adolescent health program Better Together Hennepin. That program places health mentors in schools and clinics to provide sexual health education, fueling a “vision of healthy, self-reliant citizens through the prevention of teen pregnancy.”
