President Donald Trump and his team threatened to issue subpoenas to providers, investigating them for fraud and pushing criminal prosecution, if they continued the treatment.
Several states — 16 to be exact — are standing with America’s trans youth by filing lawsuits against the Trump administration over the ban of gender-affirming care, Associated Press reports.
While there were states where care was permitted by law, eight major hospitals and systems in those states announced they were stopping or limiting the care that hundreds of trans youth depend on. In a statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James labeled Trump and his administration’s actions as “a cruel and targeted harassment campaign against providers who offer lawful, lifesaving care to children.”
“We will never stop fighting for the dignity, safety, and basic rights of the transgender community,” she continued, according to NPR.
Filed in a Massachusetts federal court, the suit accuses the administration of trying to issue a de facto ban, a Latin term meaning “in fact” — a national ban on youth gender-affirming care, despite the absence of a federal statute that prohibits it. “The result is an atmosphere of fear and intimidation experienced by transgender individuals, their families and caregivers, and the medical professionals who seek only to provide necessary, lawful care to their patients,” the lawsuit read.
Connecticut’s Children’s Medical Center announced “an increasingly complex and evolving landscape” for limiting care. Roughly seven other major hospitals and health systems, including Washington D.C.’s Children’s National, UChicago Medicine, and Yale New Haven Health, followed suit.
While using a law that labels female genital mutilation on anyone under 18 as a felony, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi says the law applies to specific types of gender-affirming surgery. However, the number of transgender minors having surgery is rare.
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Source: Black Enterprise
