Federal court blocks Trump order ending support for minors' gender transitions

SEATTLE (CN) — A federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order**** Friday on an executive move cutting federal funding from medical institutions that provide gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

“Congress appropriated millions of dollars meant for health care. Trump issued an executive order making funding contingent on recipients refusing gender-affirming care, which violates the separation of powers,” U.S. District Judge Lauren King said. “Although the executive order claims to protect children from irreversible medical treatment, the order is not limited to children or to irreversible treatments. The executive order is aimed at the erasure of transgender individuals, and blatantly discriminates against transgender youth.”

President Donald Trump signed the executive order on Jan. 28, just over a week after his second inauguration.

The order directs federally run insurance programs to exclude coverage for gender-affirming surgeries or hormone treatments for people under the age of 19 and directs agencies to immediately pull funding from any medical institution, such as a medical school or hospital, that is providing gender-affirming care to minors.

The state of Washington, joined by Minnesota, Oregon and three unnamed physicians, sued the Trump administration last Friday, arguing the order will jeopardize vital operations at medical research facilities.

“The order is not just discriminatory. It’s an abuse of power. The president has grabbed powers that do not belong to him,” Tera Heintz, Washington deputy solicitor general, argued on Friday.

Heintz said the executive order has already caused transgender youth to experience higher levels of depression, anxiety and suicidality.

“Absent an injunction, the order will terminate over one billion dollars of federal funding to the plaintiff states’ medical schools and hospitals that is used to research and treat hundreds of conditions having nothing to do with gender-affirming care, including cancer, AIDS, diabetes, substance use disorder, mental health conditions, autism, aging, cardiovascular diseases, maternal health, and so much more,” the states wrote in the complaint.

Under the order, insurance programs like TRICARE for military families and Medicaid are directed to exclude coverage for gender-affirming care. The Department of Justice is also directed to vigorously pursue litigation and promote legislation to allow children who received this type of care and their parents to sue medical professionals.

The states also argued that the order unfairly targets transgender youth in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment.

“In restricting medical care that affirms an individual’s gender only where it is different from their sex assigned at birth — the defining trait of being transgender — the order blatantly classifies based on transgender status.” the states wrote in their motion for a temporary restraining order.

The states also argue the order openly discriminates, because it doesn’t prohibit funding for the same treatments when they are not used for gender affirmation.

Department of Justice attorney Vinita Andrapalliyal argued that a temporary restraining order is not needed at this stage, and that Trump merely exercised his constitutional authority.

“All he has done is ask agencies to take the appropriate next steps to look at what grants are out there,” Andrapalliyal said. “Until an agency actually revokes a particular grant, the court doesn’t have enough facts to issue a temporary restraining order.”

King disagreed and questioned Andrapalliyal about the treatments targeted by the executive order, particularly those that may be used to treat disorders unrelated to gender.

Following the hearing, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown thanked the parents and kids who submitted their personal stories and aided the case.

“What we received today is but step one of ensuring that people have the healthcare they are entitled to,” Brown said.

The states argue that transgender individuals are unconstitutionally targeted by the executive order and that the order “usurps spending and legislative powers belonging exclusively to Congress, and seizes the states’ historic police powers to regulate the practice of medicine in violation of the Tenth Amendment.”

The order largely mirrors legislation enacted by some 26 states in recent years seeking to restrict or ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender adolescents. Trump described the treatments targeted in the order, which include puberty blockers and hormone therapy, as “junk science”

“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,” Trump declared in the order.

The states aren’t the only parties to take the Trump administration to court over the order. On Feb. 4, three days before the states filed their lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit against the president on behalf of seven families with transgender or nonbinary children a national LGBTQ+ group and a doctors organization.

The order is one of several issued by Trump in the first weeks of his presidency that have taken aim at reversing policies by the Biden administration to protect transgender people.

One of Trump’s first executive orders sought to define sex as only male or female, prohibiting the State Department from issuing passports with an “X” gender marker to nonbinary, transgender or intersex people. The president also issued an order stripping protections for transgender inmates in federal prisons and another banning transgender people from serving in the military.