Xavier Becerra: HHS Secretary From March 2021

Relief-era office: Secretary of Health and Human Services, confirmed March 18, 2021¹
Earlier: U.S. Representative from California, 1993 to January 2017; Attorney General of California²³
Since 2025: Candidate for governor of California⁴

In the archive

Case: Apter v. Department of Health and Human Services — S.D. Tex., Galveston
Case: Biden v. Missouri — application for a stay in the Supreme Court of the United States
Case: Brach v. Newsom — U.S. District Court, Central District of California, No. 2:20-cv-06472
Case: Chambless Enterprises, LLC v. Redfield — W.D. La., Monroe Division
Case: Changizi v. Department of Health and Human Services — S.D. Ohio, Eastern Division
Case: State of Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services — N.D. Fla., No. 3:21-cv-02722
Case: Terkel v. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — E.D. Tex., No. 6:20-cv-00564

Xavier Becerra was President Biden's Secretary of Health and Human Services from March 2021 through the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency. The Senate confirmed him on March 18, 2021 by 50 votes to 49.¹ As Secretary he controlled the Provider Relief Fund, the $178 billion Congress had appropriated for hospitals and other health-care providers; the laws that created it assign its distribution to the HHS Secretary.⁵ His department and he were also the named defendants in a run of lawsuits over its pandemic rules and statements.

Confirmation

Becerra came to HHS from the California attorney general's office. He had represented California's 30th and later 34th congressional districts from 1993 to January 2017.² Senators who spoke against his nomination cited his record as attorney general, including his office's litigation against the Little Sisters of the Poor and its defense of California's limits on indoor worship services. The Daily Digest records the confirmation "by 50 yeas to 49 nays (Vote No. EX. 125)."³¹

The Provider Relief Fund

Congress appropriated $178 billion to the fund in three laws: $100 billion in the CARES Act, $75 billion in the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act and $3 billion in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021.⁵ After a May 12, 2021 House Energy and Commerce hearing, committee members asked Becerra in writing how much money remained in the fund and when HHS would pay it out. His answer gave no figure: HHS was "working on approaches to distribute Provider Relief Fund (PRF) funding as quickly and equitably as possible while maintaining effective safeguards for taxpayer dollars." Elsewhere in the same answers he noted a separate $8.5 billion appropriated for rural Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP providers.⁶

On September 10, 2021 HHS announced $25.5 billion in provider funding: a $17 billion Phase 4 of the fund and the $8.5 billion rural distribution under the American Rescue Plan. Phase 4 paid 75 percent of its money, $12.75 billion, as base payments tied to providers' changes in revenue and expenses from July 2020 through March 2021, with higher percentages for small and medium providers, and 25 percent, $4.25 billion, as bonuses for providers serving Medicaid, CHIP and Medicare patients. HHS released $9 billion in December 2021, $2 billion in January 2022, $560 million in February and $413 million in March, or $12 billion of the $17 billion by March 2022, according to the Congressional Research Service.⁵

On May 11, 2023 Becerra ended the federal COVID-19 public health emergency. The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, enacted the following month, rescinded the fund's unobligated money for provider payments, and HHS continued to recover payments made in error or left unused.⁷

In court

As Secretary, Becerra was a named defendant in several of the pandemic's rule and speech cases:

America's Frontline Doctors and other plaintiffs sued HHS and Becerra in the Northern District of Alabama in May 2021 to challenge the emergency use authorizations of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.⁸
In December 2021 the Solicitor General, for President Biden, Becerra and other officials, asked the Supreme Court to stay an injunction that blocked, in ten states, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rule requiring vaccination of staff at Medicare- and Medicaid-certified providers.⁹
Three Twitter users sued HHS, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Becerra in the Southern District of Ohio in March 2022, alleging the government used technology companies to silence critics of its COVID-19 policies. The court dismissed the case in May 2022.¹⁰
Three physicians sued HHS, Becerra, the FDA and its commissioner in the Southern District of Texas in June 2022 over FDA statements on off-label use of ivermectin for COVID-19. The Fifth Circuit reversed the district court's judgment in October 2023, and the parties settled and dismissed the case with prejudice in March 2024.¹¹

Since 2025

After leaving HHS, Becerra ran for governor of California. On June 5, 2026 NBC News projected that he had advanced from the state's top-two primary to the November general election; with two-thirds of the expected vote counted, he had about 27 percent.⁴

Tom Engels — HRSA administrator who ran the Provider Relief Fund's early distributions in 2020.

Xavier Becerra

In the archive

Confirmation

The Provider Relief Fund

In court

Since 2025

Related profiles

Sources