Democratic-led states sue HHS over proposal targeting hospitals that offer transgender care to minors

By Tierney Sneed, CNN

(CNN) — Eighteen Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging a new Trump administration policy seeking to bar transgender care for minors at federally-funded hospitals.

The new proposal and the legal fight it has provoked is the latest front in the battle over transgender rights and medical care.

The latest proposal by the Department of Health and Human Services focuses on hospitals’ provision of gender identity care for transgender minors. However, the administration has also taken steps to attack transgender medical care for all ages, as part of a broad campaign against transgender rights that has included barring their participation in the military, eliminating references to transgender people from government websites, and ending programs to collect data on trans related health issues.

The states’ lawsuit centers on a proposal, announced in a December 18 declaration by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to target hospitals that provide transgender medical care, such as puberty blockers, to minors, by barring their participation in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

Kennedy claimed that the procedures failed to “meet professionally recognized standards of care.”

The challengers allege that this policy would violate the Administrative Procedure Act, which puts guardrails on how executive branch agencies implement policies. The states claim the policy unlawfully interferes with their administration of Medicaid and it impedes on states’ authority to regulate medical practices within their borders.

“Health care decisions should be made by patients, families, and their providers – not by politicians making false claims about the safety of care,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

The other states bringing the lawsuit are Oregon, Washington, New York, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin, as well as the District of Columbia.

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CNN’s Jamie Gumbrecht and Sarah Owermohle contributed to this report