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A coalition of California and other liberal-led states sued the Trump administration on Friday over efforts to end gender-affirming care for transgender, intersex, non-binary children and young adults around the country.
The lawsuit was brought by California Atty. General Rob Bonta and officials from 15 other states and the District of Columbia. It challenges a Jan. 28 executive order by President Trump that denounced gender-affirming care as “amputation” and called for US Department of Justice officials to effectively enforce the ban, including launching an investigation into health care providers.
The lawsuit points to the Justice Department last month sending more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics providing such care nationwide, suggesting that judicial authorities could face criminal prosecution.
In a statement, Bonta’s office said such efforts were “intended to prevent providers from providing legal life-saving care under state law without legal basis.” The lawsuit calls on federal courts in Massachusetts to evict the entire Trump order entirely to overturn federal authorities and undermine state laws that ensure equal access to healthcare.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Trump has curtailed transgender rights and made it an important presidential campaign promise. Upon his appointment, he moved swiftly through executive orders, fundraising and litigation. And in many ways, it has been working – especially when it comes to gender-affirming care for minors.
Clinics across the country that provided such care have closed their doors in response to threats and cuts in funding. This includes the famous Transyouth Health and Development Center at Los Angeles Children’s Hospital, one of the largest and oldest pediatric gender clinics in the United States.
The clinic told thousands of patients and their families that it had been closed last month. Other clinics have similarly been closed nationwide, radically reducing the availability of such care in the United States.
Republicans and other Trump supporters have cheered the closure as a big victory, and they praised the president for protecting impressive and confused children from so-called awakened health professionals, pushing forward what they claim to be a dangerous and irreversible treatment.
In a statement Friday, Bonta said the “relentless attacks” on Trump and his administration’s such care were “cruel and irresponsible” and “already vulnerable youth with health and happiness at risk.”
“These actions have created a sober effect that providers are pressured to reduce care for fear of prosecution, leaving countless individuals without the necessary critical care and being entitled under the law,” Bonta said.
The mainstream American medical association has been supporting gender maintenance care for minors who have experienced gender discomfort for many years. They and LGBTQ+ rights groups accused Trump and his supporters of mischaracterizing their care. This can include treatment, counseling, social transition support, and adolescent blockers, hormonal treatment, and in rare circumstances mastectomy.
Queer advocates, many patients, and their families say that such care saves lives and reduces the thought of intense distress and suicide among transgender and other gender-composed young people. They and many mainstream health professionals acknowledge that care that maintains the gender of young people is still a developing field, but they say it is based on decades of solid research by health professionals who are far more equipped than politicians to help families make difficult medical decisions.
However, the discussion has not been established in many parts of the country as the number of children identified as transgender or non-binary has increased rapidly in recent years. Conservatives and Republican leaders are referring to young people who are increasingly uneasy about such care, who have changed their minds about the transition and now regret the care they received.
“Counters of children soon regret that they’ve been amputated and begin to grasp the horrific tragedy that they can’t pregnant with their own children or raise them through breastfeeding,” Trump’s executive order said.
Trump and others are escalating tensions even further by spreading misinformation about children whipping away from school and getting their genitals to be cut off without the knowledge of their parents.
The fight is being played out in court as a matter of state rights. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that conservative states could ban blockers and hormonal treatments for transgender teenage adolescents, and the court’s conservative majority found that states could generally set free health care standards.
However, the Trump administration does not take the same view. Instead, they actively sought to eradicate gender-maintaining care across the country, regardless of state laws that protected it.
Trump’s January 28th executive order, titled “Protecting children from chemical and surgical amputations,” argued that “health professionals are injuring and sterilizing more and more impressive children under the fundamental and false claims that adults can change the sex of children through a series of irreversible medical interventions.”
Defining children as people under the age of 19 and moving forward, the United States said it would not “fund, sponsor, promote, support or support” children’s so-called “transition” for certain sex,” but it would “enforce strictly all laws prohibit or limit these disruptive and life-related procedures.”
The state lawsuit focuses on specific sections of the order and directs Atty. General Pam Bondi is to convene the state attorney general and other law enforcement officers across the country to begin an investigation into gender-affirming care providers and other groups that “may mislead the public about the long-term side effects of chemical and surgical amputations.”
This section suggests that these investigations may be based on the law against “female genital mutilation” or the periphery of the 1938 law known as the food, drug and cosmetics laws, and approved the Food and Drug Administration to regulate food, drugs, medical devices and cosmetics.
On July 9, Bondi issued a subpoena to the Department of Justice health care providers, saying, “The mutilated children in the service of distorted ideological conditions will be held accountable.”
On July 25, The Times reported that the Trump administration’s controversial and elected Bill Essaylie to a US lawyer in Los Angeles came to the idea of criminally charging doctors and hospitals to provide gender-affirming care, according to two federal law enforcement sources who spoke about conditions of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.
Gender-maintaining care targeting is part of the administration’s broad efforts to eliminate transgender rights in part, in the assumption that transgender people do not exist. On his first day in office, Trump issued another executive order, declaring only two genders, and denounced what was called the “gender ideology” on the left.
His administration is trying to limit the options for transgender people to obtain passports that reflect their identity, and the Department of Justice sued California to allow transgender girls to compete with other girls in youth sports. Many transgender Americans are looking for ways to escape the country.
Still, many people in the LGBTQ+ community fear that the attacks will only get worse. Some of the scariest people are parents and families of trans children. They also include those who believe their health records were collected under a Department of Justice subpoena.
One mother, a patient at the Children’s Hospital, said last month that she feared the Department of Justice would “slept after her parents, use the women’s genital mutilation law to prosecute her parents and separate me from her child.”
Bonta is leading the lawsuit along with Attorney Generals in Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York. Joining them are Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Delaware Attorney General, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.
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