By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) – Families of transgender children on Tuesday asked a federal court to block U.S. President Donald Trump’s order to end all federal funding or support for healthcare that aids gender transitions for people younger than 19.
In a lawsuit filed against the Trump administration in Maryland federal court, the families allege that the order discriminates against transgender people and goes beyond Trump’s authority as president. Hospitals have already canceled treatments in response to the order, according to the lawsuit.
Trump, a Republican, said in the Jan. 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.”
Details about how far the order will reach and how it will be enforced were not immediately clear.
It directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to “take all appropriate actions to end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children,” which could include imposing conditions on healthcare providers participating in the federally funded Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs. Such actions would likely require the agency to go through a formal rulemaking process.
The order followed a previous executive order by Trump banning transgender people from the military, and another stating that the government will not recognize gender identity apart from “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”
The order on the military has already been challenged by transgender rights groups. The other has been challenged in two separate lawsuits by transgender women incarcerated in federal prisons who face transfer to men’s prisons, one of whom has won a temporary restraining order blocking her transfer.
Treatments covered by the order include puberty blockers, hormones and surgery provided to patients under 19 for the purpose of gender transition. Such treatments are often known as gender-affirming care.
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 puberty blockers and hormones, though not surgery, for transgender minors. It passed a rule banning discrimination against transgender people in healthcare, which was blocked by a judge last year.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has said that gender-affirming care is proven to prevent suicide and improve mental health.
Health organizations in some other countries have been more guarded, with the European Academy of Paediatrics calling for more research and a government-sponsored review in England concluding that the existing evidence around youth gender care is weak.
(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Michael Perry)
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