In a complaint filed Friday, 17 Democratic officials accused the Trump administration of illegally pressuring medical professionals to halt gender-affirming care for transgender youngsters.
The complaint was filed a month after at least eight large hospitals and hospital systems—all located in jurisdictions where the treatment is permitted by state law—announced that they were ceasing or limiting it. Chicago’s UI Health made the most recent news on Thursday.
In July, the Trump administration declared that it was focusing on looking into providers for fraud and was issuing subpoenas to them. Hospitals are stopping treatments, it subsequently claimed in a news release.
Since there is no federal legislation that forbids providing care to minors, Democratic leaders claim that Trump’s proposals are an attempt to create a statewide prohibition on treatment for anyone under the age of 19. Attorneys general from fifteen states, the District of Columbia, and the governor of Pennsylvania filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Boston.
According to a statement from New York Attorney General Letitia James, the federal government is waging a vicious and focused harassment campaign against healthcare professionals who provide children with legal, life-saving care.
Trump and others who oppose the care argue that it is based on dubious science and that it causes long-lasting effects that recipients may later regret.
Since 2021, laws prohibiting or restricting gender-affirming care for kids have been passed in 28 states with Republican-controlled legislatures. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in June that states are entitled to implement those statutes.
State legislation and modifications to medical facility policies have caused families with transgender children to rush to get treatment.
The medical facilities are reacting to legal and political pressure.
The largest public source of gender-affirming care for children and teens in the United States, the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, shuttered its doors in July.
Similar announcements have been made by at least seven other significant medical facilities and systems, such as Yale New Haven Health, UChicago Medicine, and Children’s National in Washington, D.C.
Kaiser Permanente, which has offices in California and a number of other states, said that it would continue hormone therapy but stop performing gender-affirming procedures on patients under the age of 19 by the end of August.
For tapering down care, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center pointed to an ever-changing and complex environment.
Since Trump took office again in January, several hospitals have already taken similar actions, such as Penn State.
The health systems have discontinued the services for legal, not medical, grounds, according to Alex Sheldon, executive director of GLMA, a group that promotes health care equity for LGBTQ+ individuals.
According to Sheldon, no hospital has ever said that it is discontinuing care because it is not medically sound.
The Trump administration has taken several actions to attack the care.
As transgender persons have become more visible and accepted in some ways, Trump focused heavily on them throughout his campaign last year in response to a growing conservative backlash. Trump took issue with transgender women participating in women’s sports, gender-affirming care, and using women’s toilets and other facilities.
Trump laid the stage for a series of policies that impact transgender people when he issued an executive order on his inauguration day in January that defined the sexes as solely male and female for federal purposes. A week or so later, Trump demanded that federal funds—including Medicaid—no longer be used for gender-affirming care for children under the age of 19.
According to an AP-NORC poll, roughly half of American adults are satisfied with Trump’s handling of transgender issues. But according to the American Medical Association, gender is on a spectrum, and the organization is against laws that limit access to healthcare that is gender-affirming.
A variety of medical and mental health therapies are included in gender-affirming care to support an individual’s gender identity, even if it differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. It includes hormone therapy to cause physical changes, counseling, medicine to prevent puberty, and, in rare cases for kids, surgery.
A judge put a halt to the government spending ban on care in March.
Other federal government actions were not halted by the court’s decision.
Attorney General Pam Bondi instructed government investigators in April to concentrate on providers who continue to treat transgender adolescents with gender-affirming care. “The Department of Justice will end these practices under my leadership,” she stated.
The Department of Health and Human Services released a study in May that only focused on talk therapy and discouraged medical procedures for transgender youngsters. The ability of teenagers to provide their consent to life-altering procedures that may cause infertility in the future is questioned in the paper. LGBTQ+ advocates have harshly condemned the study, which the administration has not disclosed who wrote it.
A Justice Department memo from June recommended giving civil probes of the treatment’s providers top priority.
The Justice Department said in July that it has served over 20 subpoenas to physicians and clinics that provide gender-affirming care for young people as part of investigations into health care fraud, false claims, and other potential misconduct.
Additionally, the White House praised moves this week to stop providing gender-affirming care, calling it a primitive, pseudoscientific practice.
Families are concerned about getting treatment.
Late last year, Kirsten Salvatore’s 15-year-old child began hormone therapy at Penn State Health. Before the case was made public, Salvatore stated in an interview with The Associated Press that it was a significant contributor to a decrease in symptoms of despair and anxiety. The health system formally informed the family last month that, although talk therapy can continue, it will no longer provide the hormones to patients under the age of 19 after July 31.
Salvatore has been having trouble locating a facility that would supply the hormones and take Medicaid that is not hours from their residence in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.
She remarked, “I’m blind and unguided, and whatever breadcrumbs I was given lead to a dead-end alleyway.”
There is enough testosterone in the family’s supply to endure until January. However, she warned that Salvatore’s child would run the risk of detransitioning if they are unable to locate a new caregiver by that time.
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The spelling of Salvatore’s first name has been changed in this narrative to Kirsten instead of Kristen.
