The New York Attorney General’s office has ordered a hospital in New York City to reopen its shuttered Transgender Youth Health Program. NYU Langone Health in Manhattan closed its gender-affirming care program for trans youth on February 17, citing “the current regulatory environment.”

In addition to counseling and mental health services, the program provided puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery for trans youth.

Related

Trans youth left to find new care providers after NY hospital abruptly ends services

In a letter obtained by The New York Times dated February 25, a senior official in the attorney general’s office warned hospital officials that the program’s closure was in conflict with New York state anti-discrimination laws, by barring trans youth from obtaining services and medications available to other patients.

“New York state laws prohibit discrimination based on a patient’s membership in a protected class,” wrote Darsana Srinivasan, head of the New York AG’s health care bureau.

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

NYU Langone began informing families of patients in the program last month that their care would end in February. The attorney general’s office cited numerous complaints from those patients in the letter.

“You are hereby advised to immediately resume all service offerings as they had before the change in policy and to make medically necessary puberty-blocking medications and hormone therapies available for patients under 19 who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria,” the letter advised NYU Langone’s legal counsel, giving them 10 days to report on the hospital’s compliance. That deadline is Saturday.

NYU Langone’s announcement ending the Transgender Youth Health Program followed a year of threats to gender-affirming care providers from the Trump administration, culminating in December with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s order that the federal government would withhold Medicare and Medicaid funding — a large portion of healthcare budgets nationwide — from any hospital that provided gender-affirming care for trans minors.

The funding threat was the latest in a series of coordinated attacks on trans identity from the Trump administration, beginning with the president’s “gender ideology” and “child mutilation” executive orders issued at the start of his second term.

Since then, the Justice Department subpoenaed dozens of doctors and clinics providing gender-affirming care; the Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into gender-affirming care providers; and the FBI set up a snitch line to “protect our children and hold accountable those who mutilate them under the guise of gender-affirming care,” among other assaults on the practice.

Dozens of hospitals have chosen to end their trans youth programs in the aftermath, while a few have stayed open under countervailing state pressure.

Ahead of Saturday’s deadline, NYU Langone has not said publicly if it will join that list.

The hospital’s decision to close the program came before the Trump administration carried out its funding threats, the letter noted.

“NYU Langone’s change in policy is self-imposed,” the letter states. “There has been no change in federal law to require the cessation of medically necessary transgender health care.”

The decision to close the trans youth program came despite an earlier warning from New York Attorney General Letitia James last February, when she advised hospitals statewide they must conform to New York’s anti-discrimination laws.

“Regardless of the availability of federal funding, we write to further remind you of your obligation to comply with New York state laws,” James said then.  

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.