SACRAMENTO — California sued the Trump administration Monday over new restrictions on federal funding for organizations that perform abortions or consult with women on how to obtain them.

The administration adopted a rule last month banning doctors who refer patients to abortion providers from receiving money through a family planning program known as Title X. The rule also requires clinics that perform abortions to do so in a separate building from where they conduct the rest of their services.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wrote in its rule that the changes were necessary to eliminate the possibility that Title X funding could be used for abortion services, which is prohibited by federal law. But critics have denounced the regulations as an attack on Planned Parenthood, the largest recipient of Title X funding nationwide, and as an effort to shift government money to faith-based family planning organizations.

State Attorney General Xavier announced the lawsuit — California’s 47th against the Trump administration — in a news conference at the Capitol. He was joined by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom; 20 Democratic women in the Assembly and Senate; and representatives of the group Essential Access Health, which distributes Title X funding in California and is pursuing its own lawsuit against the administration over the new rule.

“Somehow in 2019, American women are still fighting for the right to determine the fate of their lives, our own bodies and our own destinies,” Siebel Newsom said. “What the president is really attacking here is gender equality and female autonomy.”

More than 360 clinics in California receive federal family planning funding to provide birth control, cancer screenings, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and other health care services for primarily low-income patients. Their programs serve about 1 million people a year, more than a quarter of the Title X patients in the country.

Julie Rabinovitz, president and CEO of Essential Access Health, said many of those clinics intend to give up the funding rather than comply with the new rule when it takes effect in May. That would force hundreds of staff layoffs across the state, she said, leading to longer wait times for patients and possible clinic closures.

“We cannot and will not allow the Trump-Pence administration to create a two-tier health system that dictates a different, lower standard of care for low-income and uninsured individuals,” Rabinovitz said.

The Reagan administration adopted a similar rule in 1988, prohibiting recipients of Title X funding from counseling patients about or referring them for abortions. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the rule in 1991, but it was delayed by further legal action, and then-President Bill Clinton reversed it shortly after taking office two years later.

Becerra said the legal landscape has changed since the high court’s ruling. His lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, points to a provision from the Affordable Care Act, signed by President Barack Obama in 2010, that forbids any regulation that “interferes with communications regarding a full range of treatment options between the patient and provider.”

“The facts are different. The law is different,” Becerra said. “Everyone gets their day in court.”

Another 20 states and Washington, D.C. are expected to sue over the rule on Tuesday in Oregon. A spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff