A federal judge has blocked efforts by the Trump administration to withhold $600 million in health care grants from Illinois and three other states, while the states’ lawsuit over the cuts proceeds. 

The judge had previously issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the federal government from holding back the funds from Illinois, California, Colorado and Minnesota – but that order was good only for about a month. U.S. District Court Judge Manish Shah issued the preliminary injunction in the case late Friday afternoon. 

“The loss of capacity to fund and maintain public health infrastructure puts the health of plaintiffs’ residents in jeopardy,” Shah wrote in his order for the preliminary injunction. “… The states’ sovereign interests here outweigh the executive branch’s likely unlawful interest in using preauthorized funding to shape state-run governance.” 

Shah, who is a judge in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division, was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2014.

The four states had sued the Trump administration in February after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told Congress it planned to cut the funding from the states. At the time, the department said in a statement to the Tribune, “These grants are being terminated because they do not reflect agency priorities.” 

Illinois alone stood to lose more than $170 million in health care grants that go to state agencies and organizations.

“Thanks to the order we secured, hundreds of nurses, disease detectives and other essential public health workers will keep their jobs as we fight the Trump administration’s unlawful attempt to terminate more than $600 million in health-related funding,” Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said in a statement after the injunction was issued. “

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement Monday, “HHS remains committed to ensuring that grant funding aligns with its priorities to best serve the American people.”

Before the court issued the preliminary injunction, funds at risk included $86 million slated to go to the Illinois Department of Public Health for public health efforts and prevention of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, and more than $61 million for the Chicago Department of Public Health for similar work, according to information obtained by the Tribune.

The biggest pot of money at risk was the Public Health Infrastructure Block Grant, which, in Illinois, funds lead poisoning prevention grants to 25 local health departments and grants that support 674 public health jobs at 96 local agencies, according to the states’ lawsuit.

The Illinois Department of Public Health would have had to terminate 99 workers if the state lost those dollars, according to the lawsuit.

Other nongovernmental organizations in Illinois also faced cuts under the plan, including Lurie Children’s Hospital, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the Itasca-based American Academy of Pediatrics and the Chicago-based American Medical Association, among others.

The states allege in court documents that the Trump administration has targeted them for “devastating funding cuts … based on sovereign choices by Plaintiff States, including whether the States choose to lend their scarce law enforcement resources to federal immigration enforcement.”

The states contend that the cuts are unlawful because they are arbitrary and capricious and exceed the agencies’ authority. They also allege the cuts are unconstitutional.

The federal government, however, argues in court documents that its “decisions to terminate these awards were reasonable and reasonably explained — and, notably, Plaintiffs nowhere dispute that CDC rightly identified the terminated grants as inconsistent with agency priorities. Plaintiffs’ attempts to dress up this contract dispute as a constitutional case fail at each turn.”