A coalition of families of transgender youth and advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday to stop the federal government from implementing an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies to examine policies related to gender-affirming care for children and teens.
The groups argue in the lawsuit that President Donald Trump is unlawfully discriminating against transgender people by attempting to stop access to medically necessary health care for trans people under 19 across the country.
The order would also deny federal funds to hospitals, clinics, doctors and other providers that offer gender-affirming medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormone therapies to anyone under 19.
“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,” the order read in part.
Major medical groups including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association support access to health care for trans youth.
The 44-page complaint was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. The defendants named in the case include Trump, federal agencies including HHS, the Health Resources and Services Administration and the National Institutes of Health and officials including acting HHS Secretary Dorothy Fink and acting HRSA administrator Diana Espinosa.
Karen Loewy, senior counsel at Lambda Legal, said that the executive orders exceed Trump’s authority as president by ignoring Section 1557 of the 2010 health care law, which prohibits discrimination in specified health programs or activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability.
“Congress already did what it needed to do when it passed the Affordable Care Act and in doing so, prohibited the discrimination on the basis of sex, which as the Supreme Court held in Bostock [v. Clayton County], includes transgender status,” Loewy said. “So Congress has already acted here. The part of what makes the executive order unauthorized is that it is trying to ignore congressional action.”
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are civil rights advocacy groups Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Maryland, PFLAG Inc., GLMA, which was previously known as the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association and the law firms Hogan Lovells and Jenner & Block.
They are suing on behalf of two transgender young adults and five transgender adolescents who the complaint says have had their health care disrupted by Trump’s executive order.
“Today’s order lays out a clear plan to shut down access to life-saving medical care for transgender youth nationwide, overriding the role of families and putting politics between patients and their doctors. We will not allow this dangerous, sweeping, and unconstitutional order to stand,” Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, said in a press release.
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