Gay Men’s Health Crisis et al. v. Dr. Louis Sullivan

In 1990 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) proposed revisions to its grant terms regulating programs designed for HIV/AIDS prevention and education. Under the proposed revisions, programs were prohibited from using materials that were offensive to their target audience or to the majority of individuals outside their target audience. The CDC proceeded with the notice-and-comment rulemaking process. After receiving comments expressing concern about prohibiting materials found offensive to individuals outside the programs’ target audience, the CDC made additional revisions. The revised proposal introduced an offensiveness criterion, under which programs were prohibited from using materials that were offensive to a majority of individuals outside their target audience unless a program review panel (the panel) determined that the materials’ potential effectiveness in communicating about HIV prevention and education outweighed the materials’ potential offensiveness. The CDC defended the revised grant terms by explaining that it was already barred from funding obscene material pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 300ee(d) and the offensiveness criterion encompassed the prohibition on obscene material. In response, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (plaintiff) (Health Crisis) filed an action in federal district court against Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan (defendant). Health Crisis claimed that the CDC’s offensiveness criterion was unconstitutionally broad and vague and had the potential to chill speech in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Health Crisis introduced into evidence that the panels did not uniformly apply the offensiveness criterion and that panel members each had unique opinions at to what materials were offensive. The district court considered the case.