A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to end gender-affirming care for minors, according to Connecticut Attorney General William Tong.
The order, handed down on March 21, ruled that the Trump administration “cannot threaten to cut off hospitals and clinics from Medicare and Medicaid for providing gender-affirming care,” according to a press release from Tong’s office.
“Trump and [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] tried to deny care and force a radical political agenda on doctors and families by weaponizing Medicare and Medicaid funding,” Tong said in the press release. “This was cruel and illegal, and we just beat them in court. We’re going to keep fighting and winning to protect the right of families and doctors to make personal medical decisions free from political interference.”
The Trump administration’s push to end gender-affirming care for youth started with an executive order issued a week after Trump was inaugurated for his second term. The order, titled “Protecting Children From Chemical And Surgical Mutilation,” called this type of health care “a stain on our Nation’s history.”
“It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures,” the executive order read.
The order sought to defund “chemical and surgical mutilation” — puberty blockers, sex hormones and surgeries to remove or alter one’s sexual organs — by ensuring that medical institutions receiving federal research or education grants were not performing gender-affirming care. It also prompted the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to alter Medicare or Medicaid conditions for coverage of these procedures and mandatory drug use reviews, among other things.
In December, the HHS announced several regulation proposals to carry out Trump’s executive order. The proposals instructed the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to release its own proposed rules barring hospitals from performing gender-affirming care on those under 18 years old as a condition of participation in Medicare and Medicaid, which nearly all U.S. hospitals participate in. The proposals also prohibited federal Medicaid funding to be used for these procedures.
A December HHS report said that gender-affirming care does not meet “professionally recognized standards of health care.” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy then signed a declaration saying that “practitioners who perform sex-rejecting procedures on minors would be deemed out of compliance with those standards.”
The court’s order specifically ruled that Kennedy’s declaration barring Medicaid and Medicare funding for gender-affirming care was an overstep of his authority.
The other attorneys general cooperating with Connecticut and D.C. in the coalition are California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin, along with the governor of Pennsylvania.