Mikie Sherrill says Trump administration’s investigation into New Jersey abortion insurance coverage is a waste of taxpayer money

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill on Thursday said that President Donald Trump’s administration’s investigation into states requiring healthcare insurers to cover abortion “is nothing but a fishing expedition wasting taxpayers’ money.”

Sherrill’s comments came after the Department of Health and Human Services said that it had launched investigations into 13 states, including New Jersey and Delaware, that require state-regulated health insurance plans to cover abortion.

“The Trump Administration wasting time and money is a disservice to our country, especially at a time when everyday prices are skyrocketing,” Sherrill said. “This president’s ineffective leadership is having disastrous ramifications for our country.”

The Democratic governor said she will “fight tooth and nail” to defend abortion rights in the state.

“New Jersey requires health insurance plans to follow all applicable laws, including protecting women’s reproductive freedom,” she added.

New Jersey has joined about 50 court cases against the Trump administration during the president’s second term, including a handful of lawsuits that have been filed since Sherrill began her term in January.

Other states with abortion health insurance coverage requirements include New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, Illinois, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Vermont — the only state in the group with a Republican governor.

States regulate most types of private insurance, such as Affordable Care Act marketplace plans and fully insured employer-sponsored plans.

The HHS Office for Civil Rights launched the investigations “to address certain states’ alleged disregard of, or confusion about, compliance with the Weldon Amendment,” office Director Paula M. Stannard said in a statement. The Weldon Amendment is a provision that bars states from discriminating against health entities that don’t provide, cover or refer for abortions.

Stannard’s office wrote in a letter to New Jersey’s department of banking and insurance that it has “sufficient authority and cause” to investigate whether the state is “unlawfully coercing” insurers to cover abortions.

When Democrat Joe Biden was president, the office said the provision didn’t pertain to employers or other healthcare sponsors. The Trump administration said this year that it does.

The administration says that potentially puts states with abortion coverage requirements in violation of the law, because they may not allow employers or other health care issuers to opt out. It said it was sending out letters to gather more information from those states.

Trump’s first administration in 2020 moved to withhold federal health care funding for California over what it interpreted as a Weldon Amendment violation, but the Biden administration entered office the next year and reversed the decision.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.