By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) -A federal judge on Thursday blocked, for now, U.S. health agencies from enforcing President Donald Trump’s order ending all federal funding or support for healthcare that aids gender transitions for people younger than 19.
U.S. District Judge Brendan Hurson in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was appointed by Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, issued the temporary restraining order in response to a lawsuit by families of transgender teens and LGBT advocacy groups, lawyers for the plaintiffs announced.
“The president’s orders sought to take away from transgender young people the very care that they, their families, and their medical providers all agree is best for them – medical care that is evidence-based and well-established,” Omar Gonzalez-Pagan of Lambda Legal, one of the lawyers, said in a statement.
“But these decisions are for patients, their families, and their doctors to make, not for politicians or Washington bureaucrats.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump, a Republican, said in his January 28 order that 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 order directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to “take all appropriate actions to end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.” That could include imposing conditions on healthcare providers receiving any federal funds, which virtually all hospitals do.
The treatments at issue, often called gender-affirming care, include puberty-blocking medication, hormones and sometimes surgery.
In their lawsuit challenging the order filed this month, the families, who are represented by Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union, said hospitals immediately began canceling appointments for gender-affirming care in response to Trump’s order, leaving them without access to necessary treatments.
Families said they have had appointments canceled by Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., NYU Langone in New York, Boston Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Richmond in Virginia, which are not defendants in the lawsuit. Some hospitals have publicly confirmed that they have halted gender-affirming care.
The lawsuit alleges that Trump’s order discriminates against transgender people and goes beyond his authority as president. LGBT advocacy groups PFLAG and GLMA are also plaintiffs in the case.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has said in a letter to healthcare providers in New York that withholding services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity was discrimination under New York law.
Republicans in more than half of the 50 states have passed laws or policies that ban gender-affirming care for minors, some of which have been blocked or overturned by the courts. A challenge to Tennessee’s ban has been heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which has yet to issue a ruling that could determine the legality of such bans nationwide.
The administration of former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, supported access to gender-affirming care for minors. It passed a rule banning discrimination against transgender people in healthcare, which was blocked by a judge last year.
(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler, Richard Chang and Alexia Garamfalvi)
