The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles (CHLA) has served thousands of gender-diverse youth from California and around the country since it opened over 30 years ago. That treatment will end for new patients on July 22.

It was the largest gender-affirming care facility of its kind.

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The closure comes weeks after the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, and under mounting pressure from the current presidential administration.

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Children’s Hospital first announced in February that it would close the clinic’s doors, following the president’s executive order in January dictating an end to gender-affirming care for minors, which he characterized as “chemical and surgical mutilation.”

The hospital’s announcement was met with protests, and they recanted. By June, however, hospital executives backtracked in the face of threatened federal funding cuts.

The center said in a statement that despite a “deeply held commitment to supporting LA’s gender-diverse community, the hospital has been left with no viable path forward” to keep the clinic open.

In an email obtained by ABC 7 Eyewitness News in June, hospital executives cited challenges due to a “shifting policy landscape,” including the president’s executive orders on gender-affirming care and “gender ideology,” California’s budget crisis, and threatened cuts to hospital funding.

Those include termination of the hospital’s participation in the Medicaid insurance program and other federal funding sources.

CHLA said it relies on federal funding more than any other pediatric hospital in the state. Losing access to those federal dollars would impact its ability to provide essential and emergency care to low-income children and teenagers.

The clinic said it’s in the process of helping patients find alternative providers.

Protesters have been out in force at the hospital’s doors since the closure announcement in June.

Those include Jack Brenner, a nonbinary trans nurse in the hospital’s emergency room, who addressed protesters after their shift, the Associated Press reported.

“Our visibility is so important for our youth,” Brenner said, still in scrubs and choking back tears. “To see that there is a future, and that there is a way to grow up and to be your authentic self.”

“I see the change in kids’ eyes, little glints of recognition, that I am a trans adult and that there is a future,” they said. “I’ve seen kids light up when they recognize something of themselves in me. And that is so meaningful that I can provide that.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta warned CHLA in February that the clinic’s closure would violate state antidiscrimination laws, but Bonta’s office hasn’t taken any action. Bonta is among 23 state attorneys general who’ve sued the current presidential administration over the gender-affirming care executive order.

“[The] administration’s relentless assault on transgender adolescents is nothing short of an all-out war to strip away LGBTQ+ rights,” Bonta recently told the AP, just days ahead of the clinic’s closure.

“The Administration’s harmful attacks are hurting California’s transgender community by seeking to scare doctors and hospitals from providing nondiscriminatory healthcare. The bottom line is: This care remains legal in California.”

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