More than a dozen Democratic attorneys general on Friday announced a lawsuit challenging recent moves by President Trump’s administration to severely restrict access to gender-affirming health care for anyone under 19, including in states where treatment is legal and protected by law.
The lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts challenges three written directives: Trump’s Jan. 28 executive order seeking to end federal support for gender-affirming care for minors, and two memos from Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate.
The suit names Trump, Bondi and the Department of Justice as defendants. Neither the White House nor the Justice Department immediately returned a request for comment.
The Bondi memo, dated April 22, calls for the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute transition-related care for youth as genital mutilation. Shumate’s memo, sent to the Justice Department’s Civil Division on June 11, directs attorneys to prioritize investigations and enforcement actions against doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, consistent with Bondi’s order.
The attorneys general on Friday said the Justice Department “has taken aggressive action” to implement Trump’s directive on gender-affirming care and an earlier order from the president proclaiming the U.S. recognizes only two unchangeable sexes, male and female. A federal judge in Baltimore blocked Trump’s Jan. 28 order, which sought to withhold grant funding from medical providers that offer gender-transition treatments to patients under 19, in February.
The Department of Justice announced in July that it had sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics “involved in performing transgender medical procedures on children” in investigations of health care fraud and false statements. In June, the FBI made a public plea for information about hospitals, clinics and individual providers of transition-related surgery to minors.
“The federal government is running a cruel and targeted harassment campaign against providers who offer lawful, lifesaving care to children,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), who is leading Friday’s lawsuit. “This administration is ruthlessly targeting young people who already face immense barriers just to be seen and heard, and are putting countless lives at risk in the process.”
Also joining the lawsuit are the Democratic attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) is also a plaintiff.
Other federal agencies and departments have also moved to enforce Trump’s order on gender-affirming care. In May, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) broke with major health groups in an unsigned report that declared puberty blockers, hormones and rare surgeries for minors with gender dysphoria lack scientific evidence, calling for a greater reliance on psychotherapy over medical interventions.
In a May 28 letter to health care providers, risk managers and state medical boards, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said treatment protocols should be immediately updated to align with the department’s review.
Also on May 28, Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), demanded data from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to youth. CMS previously called on states to suspend the use of Medicaid funds for hormones or transition-related surgeries for minors.
On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched a public inquiry into whether providers of transgender health care are violating federal consumer protection laws. The FTC held a workshop in July titled “The Dangers of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors.”
“None of the Administration’s actions challenged by this suit have any legal basis,” the Democratic attorneys general wrote in Friday’s lawsuit. “They should be declared unlawful and vacated in their entirety.”
Across the country, hospitals, even in Democratic-controlled states that protect gender-affirming care, have begun to pause or discontinue care, citing uncertainty about Trump’s executive order and other federal actions.
In Colorado, Denver Health suspended gender-affirming surgeries for patients younger than 19 and UCHealth said it would no longer prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to minors; in Illinois, at least four Chicago-area hospitals have paused gender-transition treatments for youth; three of New York’s most prominent hospitals said they would curb gender-affirming care for minors following Trump’s order; in Washington, D.C., Children’s National Hospital recently announced that it would stop prescribing gender-affirming medications starting Aug. 30, citing “escalating legal and regulatory risks.”
In July, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles shuttered its Center for Transyouth Health and Development, one of the nation’s oldest and largest clinics for transgender young people.
The nonprofit health giant Kaiser Permanente announced last week that it would pause gender-affirming surgeries for patients younger than 19 by the end of August. Kaiser, which serves more than 12 million members in eight states and Washington, D.C, said the decision to suspend care was influenced by an evolving “legal and regulatory environment for gender-affirming care” and referenced specific Trump administration actions, including the Justice Department’s subpoenas.
California, where Kaiser is headquartered, protects access to gender-affirming care under a 2022 state law signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
At a July 24 news conference, California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D), responding to the announcements from Kaiser and other state health providers, acknowledged the state’s protections but signaled that his office would focus more on addressing the Trump administration’s threats than on medical institutions’ responses to them.
“The main problem here — the core of the issue — is the unlawful, inappropriate threats from the Trump administration. He is attempting to bully these hospitals into submission,” Bonta said. “We want to focus on the problem, which is the threat emanating from Washington D.C. and the Trump administration, and we will be.”
