By Jack Queen
Dec 23 (Reuters) – A group of Democratic state attorneys general on Tuesday sued President Donald Trump’s administration to block proposed rules that would cut children’s access to gender-affirming care, the latest court battle over Trump’s efforts to eliminate legal protections for transgender people.
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last week proposed rules that would bar hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children from Medicaid and Medicare and prohibit the Children’s Health Insurance Program from paying for it.
Kennedy, a Republican, issued a declaration on December 18 stating his agency’s review of evidence found that medical and surgical treatments for children and adolescents diagnosed with gender dysphoria had an “unfavorable risk-benefit profile.”
The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Oregon federal court disputes the department of Health and Human Services’ findings and says the proposed rules are unlawful attempts to dictate medical standards, intimidate health providers and strip states of their authority to regulate medicine.
The 19 states and the District of Columbia in the lawsuit said the rules would threaten access to healthcare for transgender youth, threaten hospitals for providing medically necessary care and force doctors to choose between abandoning their patients or risking their livelihoods.
“Secretary Kennedy cannot unilaterally change medical standards by posting a document online, 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,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Tuesday.
The Trump administration has sought this year to ban transgender people from the military, bar them from using their gender identities on passports and prohibit federal workers from using bathrooms reflecting their gender identity.
Trump seeks to end what he says was the government’s promotion of “gender ideology,” a loose term often used by conservative groups to reference ideologies that promote nontraditional views on sex and gender. Rights activists view the term as an anti-LGBTQ trope and dehumanizing.
Transgender rights have become a contentious political topic in recent years. Several Republicans campaigned to reverse transgender protection laws during the 2024 election and more than two dozen Republican-led states have passed laws banning or restricting gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
(Reporting by Jack Queen in Estes Park, Colorado; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
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