US federal judge stays Trump order cutting transgender youth medical funding

US Federal District Judge Brendan A. Hurson issued a temporary restraining order Thursday blocking a Trump administration executive order aimed at eliminating federal funding to transgender medical care for minor youths.

The judge’s order restrains executive officials from “conditioning or withholding federal funding based on the fact that a healthcare entity or health professional provides gender-affirming care to a patient under the age of nineteen…”

Trump’s controversial executive order, titled “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” cuts funding to medical institutions, schools, and hospitals unless they terminate gender-affirming care to minors. It also directed the Secretary of the Health and Human Services office to take regulatory action to discourage providers from giving gender-affirming care to minors through Medicare/Medicaid conditions, drug use reviews, and other regulatory rule-making and oversight mechanisms.

The administration touted its actions in a press release saying the order has already had its “intended effect in preventing children from being maimed and sterilized by adults perpetuating a radical, false claim that they can somehow change a child’s sex.”  The release further cited actions taken in New York, Colorado, Virginia, Washington D.C., Illinois, and Pennsylvania where gender-affirming surgeries and prescriptions have been suspended as evidence of the order’s effectiveness.

The ACLU who is a party to the lawsuit that generated the restraining order celebrated the ruling and hit back against Trump administration’s contention that gender-affirming care is not backed by rigorous scientific research:

Forcing providers to withhold medically necessary, evidence based care not only threatens patient health and well-being, but also undermines the integrity of our healthcare system in its entirety. Today’s intervention by the court underscores the cruelty and recklessness that is embedded in this order and affirms our commitment to resist the administration’s extremist agenda that targets trans and non-binary young people and privileges political ideology over medical expertise.

Gender-affirming care for minors can include hormone therapy, puberty blockers, psychiatric therapy and in rare cases surgeries. Advocacy groups like the Human Rights Campaign argue that research has shown that gender-affirming care is vitally important for the mental well-being of transgender individuals who suffer from higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide.

The restraining order is the latest development in the Trump administration’s efforts to end the use of gender-affirming care and roll back transgender rights across all levels of US society. Efforts include orders banning transgender women from sports, restrictive passport policies, and even bans on government employees’ use of pronouns in email signatures.

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