The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James has ordered NYU Langone Health to resume providing puberty blockers and hormone treatments to transgender youth following the closure of its Transgender Youth Health Program.
NYU Langone Health shut down the clinic providing gender-affirming care to transgender minors last month, citing “the current regulatory environment” as one of several reasons for the move.
The decision came just months after the Trump administration moved to adopt regulations that would bar Medicaid funds from covering transition-related treatments for people under 19 and threatened to yank federal funding from hospitals that provide such treatments to minors. Those regulations have not yet been finalized and remain in the federal rulemaking process.
Last month, NYU Langone Health said it was “committed to helping patients in our care manage this change,” noting that patients could still receive counseling and mental health services at the hospital, as they had before the program’s closure, reports the New York Times.
Darsana Srinivasan, chief of the health care bureau at the New York Attorney General’s Office, wrote a letter to NYU Langone Health’s top lawyer warning that the hospital’s abrupt closure of the program may have violated New York’s anti-discrimination laws.
In the letter, dated February 25, Srinivasan noted the hospital may have engaged in discrimination by barring a single category of patients — transgender individuals — from receiving medications and hormone treatments that others, including cisgender minors with hormone deficiencies, continue to access.
“New York state laws prohibit discrimination based on a patient’s membership in a protected class,” Srinivasan wrote, noting that the attorney general’s office had received several complaints from patients and their families who were being treated at the hospital.
“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,” Srinivasan continued.
The letter instructed NYU Langone Health to notify the attorney general’s office of its compliance within 10 days, warning that the state could pursue further legal action and open an investigation if the hospital fails to comply. The deadline for that notification is Saturday, March 7.
The letter also emphasized that the proposed federal rules ending funding have not yet been finalized.
“NYU Langone’s change in policy is self-imposed,” Srinivasan wrote. “There has been no change in federal law to require the cessation of medically necessary transgender health care.”
Both a spokesman for the hospital and a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office declined comment when approached by the Times.
The letter places NYU Langone Health in a difficult position, facing pressure from the Trump administration to restrict access to transition-related treatments for minors while also being required to comply with New York’s nondiscrimination laws, under which gender identity is a protected characteristic.
Over the past year, the Trump administration has attempted to effectively end gender-affirming care for minors across the United States. The U.S. Department of Justice sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics believed to be providing gender-affirming treatments to minors, accusing them of committing “healthcare fraud” and making “false statements” related to insurance billing codes while demanding confidential patient information.
Additionally, the FBI has asked members of the public to call its tip line with information about doctors believed to “mutilate” children “under the guise of gender-affirming care.” The Federal Trade Commission has also launched a public inquiry into whether practitioners of “gender-affirming care” may be deceiving consumers by making “false or unsupported claims” about transition-related treatments.
Facing pressure from the federal government and the potential loss of federal funding — which could place hospitals in financial distress — many hospitals have begun rolling back or halting services for youth with gender dysphoria.
It remains unclear how NYU Langone Health will respond to the attorney general’s demand. However, the warning should not have come as a surprise given James’s previous statements on the issue.
Last year, James advised hospitals that halting gender-affirming care for minors would violate state law.
“Electing to refuse services to a class of individuals based on their protected status, such as withholding the availability of services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity or their diagnosis of gender dysphoria, while offering such services to cisgender individuals, is discrimination under New York law,” James wrote in a letter to providers explaining that they remain bound by state law regardless of federal actions.
Republican lawmakers in Kansas have voted to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly's veto of a sweeping anti-transgender bill.
The measure, approved by both chambers earlier this month, invalidates driver's licenses and birth certificates that reflect a transgender person's gender identity rather than their assigned sex at birth. It also bars people from using restrooms that do not align with that assigned sex and bans multi-stall unisex bathrooms.
While the original House bill focused on prohibiting gender markers that align with a person's gender identity on identification documents, Republicans employed a procedural maneuver known as “gut and go” -- inserting the House language into a previously approved Senate bill -- to add the restroom restrictions.
A New York State jury has awarded $2 million to a woman who underwent a double mastectomy at age 16 as part of treatment for gender dysphoria.
The verdict, which marks the first successful medical malpractice lawsuit brought by a detransitioner, was announced last week following a three-week trial in White Plains, N.Y.
The plaintiff, 22-year-old Fox Varian of Yorktown Heights, accused her psychologist, Kenneth Einhorn, and plastic surgeon, Dr. Simon Chin, of failing to obtain adequate consent by fully informing her of the risks associated with the procedure before she agreed to undergo it in 2019.
Ohio doesn't have a standalone hate crime statute. Instead, the state relies on an "ethnic intimidation" law that allows prosecutors to elevate a crime from a misdemeanor to a felony if a suspect targeted someone based on their "race, color, religion, or national origin."
But a new bipartisan bill to create a formal hate crimes law could ultimately exclude LGBTQ victims.
The bill -- HB 306 -- would create a new offense of "hate crime" in cases where a victim was allegedly targeted for violence because of personal characteristics -- including race, religion, sex, disability, political affiliation, age, military status, familial status, ancestry, national origin, or involvement in a labor dispute.
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