Baltimore is planning to join a lawsuit against President Donald J. Trump’sadministration that challenges acut in federal funding for programs designed to reduce teen pregnancy rates, the city’s top lawyer said Wednesday. The lawsuit, joined by City Solicitor Andre M. Davis, alleges that Trump’s appointee to asenior position in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Valerie Huber, the former leader of an abstinence-only organization, has reduced federal grants for programs that do not match her belief that people should not have sex until they are married. Thesuit was filed last month in U.S. District Court in Baltimore by Healthy Teen Network, a national nonprofit based in the city that has experienced a reduction to a $3.6 million grant it received from the federal department to develop and study an app to provide sex education.

“HHS’s actions were arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law, and they have harmed and continue to harm Healthy Teen Network and those served through the grant,”the organization wrote in its complaint. The city health department says teen pregnancy rates have fallen dramatically since 2000.Aspokesman for the federal health department pointed to anews release from Augustinwhich officials said the grant program was failing to help the young people it was designed to serve. The spokesman also shared an announcement from November in which the department said it would fund new research on teen pregnancy.

—Ian Duncan