New York Attorney General Letitia James is vowing to fight the Trump administration as it seeks to impose new rules blocking hospitals from providing gender-affirming care to young people.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services is proposing a rule that would prohibit hospitals from receiving funding through Medicare or Medicaid if they provide services such as puberty blockers, hormones or surgeries to people under 18 in an attempt to “align an individual’s physical appearance or body with a stated identity that differs from the individual’s sex.”
Another proposed rule would block state Medicaid programs from covering such procedures for patients under 18. New York’s Medicaid program currently covers “medically necessary” care for patients with diagnoses of gender dysphoria, with different requirements depending on the person’s age.
“This president would rather target young people than lower costs or expand access to health care,” James said in a statement Thursday. “I will use every tool at my disposal to fight this proposal and protect transgender Americans and their families.”
James issued her condemnation as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other Trump administration officials held a press conference announcing the proposals to restrict what they referred to as “sex-rejecting procedures.”
“The Trump administration will not stand by while ideology, misinformation and propaganda push vulnerable young people into decisions they cannot fully understand and that they can never reverse,” Kennedy said.
The Trump administration recently finalized a report that outlines purported harms associated with gender-affirming treatments and seeks to discredit the current scientific framework for these interventions.
Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, has previously spoken out against the report, saying it “misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care.”
New York City hospitals, including Mount Sinai and NYU Langone, have become known as centers of excellence for gender-affirming care for young people, but the latest proposed rules would pose an existential threat if they continued to provide those services. Payments from Medicare and Medicaid constitute a major funding source for most hospitals, according to the American Hospital Association.
NYU Langone reportedly canceled multiple appointments for trans children after President Donald Trump issued an executive order earlier this year threatening to yank federal funding from hospitals providing gender-affirming care to patients under 19. Advocates for trans youth rallied outside the hospital’s Murray Hill campus.
James attempted to push back by sending a letter to New York hospitals at the time warning that they could be violating state discrimination laws by not providing services such as hormone therapy to trans youth that they would otherwise offer to other patients.
Trump’s January order was quickly blocked in court. In August, New York and 15 other states sued the Trump administration over what they described as a “cruel and targeted harassment campaign against providers” offering gender-affirming care.
Neither Mount Sinai nor NYU Langone Health immediately responded to a request for comment Thursday on the current status of their services for trans youth or the latest Trump administration proposals. The new proposed rules will undergo a 60-day public comment period before being finalized.
Washington Heights teen Lorelei Crean was 17 when Trump’s initial executive order came out and said it made them fearful that they wouldn’t be able to access gender-affirming care such as testosterone.
Crean said they have spent the past several months trying to get an initial consultation at Mount Sinai’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery. Crean is now 18, but said they are worried it will be harder to get gender-affirming care when they move to Ohio for college next year.
And they worry banning care for trans youth is just the beginning.
“This is the first step into banning gender-affirming care for all trans people,” Crean said.
