A coalition of Democratic states has sued to prevent the Trump administration from cutting off federal funding from local hospitals over their continued practice of pediatric gender medicine.
Nineteen states filed the preventive lawsuit on Tuesday after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced last week that all Medicare and Medicaid payments, which keep many facilities financially afloat, would be cut off to any healthcare provider that continues to perform “sex-rejecting procedures” on children in violation of President Donald Trump’s executive order on medically transitioning minors.
In the suit, the states are asking a federal court in Oregon to deem Kennedy’s declaration that gender-related treatments on children “fail to meet professional recognized standards of health care” an unlawful form of government overreach.
“Secretary Kennedy cannot unilaterally change medical standards by posting a document online,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is arguing on behalf of her state in the lawsuit, said in a press release. “And no one should lose access to medically necessary health care because their federal government tried to interfere in decisions that belong in doctors’ offices.”
Kennedy’s plans to claw back funding cited a peer-reviewed report from the Department of Health and Human Services released in November.
Billed as a comprehensive review of the evidence and scientific literature related to treating childhood gender dysphoria, the HHS report found that the benefits of medical intervention, namely puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery, were largely unknown compared to the known risks involved, such as infertility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone-density accrual, and surgical complications.
NEW TRUMP RULES CUT FUNDING FOR HOSPITALS THAT PERFORM GENDER TRANSITIONS FOR MINORS
The states’ suit seeks to stay the effective date of Kennedy’s declaration pending judicial review and eventually vacate it.
Joining James in the lawsuit are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, Washington, and the District of Columbia, as well as the governor of Pennsylvania.
