A federal judge is blocking Donald Trump’s administration from restricting gender-affirming healthcare to minors after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared that such treatment doesn’t meet “professionally recognized standards.”
Last year, a lawsuit from 19 states and Washington, D.C., challenged Kennedy’s “declaration” that claimed certain forms of affirming care are “unsafe and ineffective.” The policy threatened to punish doctors, hospitals and clinics that support trans youth by blocking them from federal Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Kennedy argued that his declaration “supersedes” any statewide or national care standards.
Oregon U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai said from the bench Thursday that Kennedy had overstepped his authority, dealing a temporary legal blow to the Trump administration’s government-wide actions against trans youth.
“So much of the conversation around transgender health care has lost sight of the real people harmed by the federal government’s attacks,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose state is among 19 others suing Kennedy.
“Young people are losing access to life-saving treatment, families are being left in the dark, and medical providers are being threatened just for doing their jobs and following standards of care,” she said.
The judge’s decision “breaks through the noise and gives some needed clarity to patients, families and providers.”
Kennedy’s Health and Human Services Department has already referred more than a dozen New York health providers and hospital networks to his department’s inspector general’s office for investigation.
The Independent has requested comment from HHS.
Gender-affirming care can encompass social transitioning as well as puberty-suppressing medication and surgery, which is virtually never performed on minors. Medical guidelines generally say that affirming surgeries should only be approved for people ages 18 and older.
Guidelines from major medical organizations agree that such care is clinically appropriate for trans youth experiencing gender dysphoria.
Kennedy, who called affirming care “sex-rejecting” in his declaration, is “entitled to articulate his opinion on the safety and efficacy of emerging and controversial medical practices,” according to court filings from the Department of Justice.
Last year, the Supreme Court stated that “fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field” and said the questions should be resolved by “the people, their elected representatives and the democratic process.”
Roughly 2.8 million people, or 1 percent of the U.S. population, identify as trans, including 3.3 percent of U.S. youth ages 13 to 17, or roughly 724,000 teenagers, according to data collected by UCLA Law School’s Williams Institute.
Since taking office, the president has issued a series of directives targeting trans Americans, including an executive order that erases federal recognition of trans people and other measures that restrict gender-affirming healthcare and ban trans athletes from competing in women’s sports.
The Department of Defense has also banned trans people from serving in all branches of the military after the president issued an order stating that the “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
Hundreds of federal surveys have also scrubbed questions tied to sexual orientation and gender identity, the Williams Institute found.
The decision over the Kennedy declaration “is a win for every family, provider, pro-equality state leader and supporter who refused to back down to this unlawful administration,” according to Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT+ civil rights group.
“Politicians, including RFK Jr, do not get to tell doctors how to do their jobs or families what decisions are best for their children,” she said. “Health care for transgender people is just that — health care — and that care must continue.”
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