President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order attempting to end federal support for gender transition care for people under the age of 19 — the latest move in line with his campaign promises to scale back care and protections for transgender individuals.
Tuesday’s order aims to cut Medicare and Medicaid funding to health providers that offer gender transition care to minors, which the White House defines in this case as people under the age of 19. It also directs federal officials to work with the Office of Management and Budget to ensure that medical schools and hospitals that receive federal grant money stop providing gender transition care to minors, which it describes as “chemical and surgical mutilation.”
The order faced immediate pushback from advocacy groups, who pledged to fight any efforts to deny teens’ medical care in court.
“We fought previous attempts by the first Trump administration to restrict health care and we won,” Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, said in a statement Tuesday. “We stand ready to fight back against this even more pernicious effort to deny medically necessary health care to our youth.”
Trump signed an order on Inauguration Day to officially recognize only two sexes (male and female) and directed agencies to issue government documents showing people’s sex at conception, to stop using gender identity or preferred pronouns and to maintain women-only spaces in prisons and shelters.
He has since directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to revise the Pentagon’s policy on transgender troops, which could lead to a future ban on their military service. The first lawsuits against that order were filed Tuesday.
A number of states have banned doctors from offering gender transition care, including hormones and puberty blockers, to minors in recent years.
Puberty blockers are temporary and reversible and are also used to treat non-transgender youths who are experiencing early onset puberty. Hormones can give a person physical traits that might alleviate their gender dysphoria.
The Supreme Court indicated in December that it was likely to uphold a Tennessee ban on hormones and puberty blockers for transgender teens, in a ruling that will have implications for the 23 other states that ban similar treatments for transgender minors.