A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order aiming to restrict transgender health care for anyone under 19.
Judge Brendan Hurson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland was skeptical of the government’s argument that the order is not a nationwide ban on care, but rather a “general policy directive” and that the plaintiffs — who are trans teens and young adults whose care has been affected by the order — must wait to sue.
“In this situation, it is clear that these plaintiffs have received phone calls stopping their care, stopping their appointments, stopping their everything,” Hurson said during the hearing Thursday, adding that hospitals stopped care because of the order, which also seeks to prohibit federal funding of transition-related care for minors.
“I don’t know how you can credibly argue that this is not demanding the cessation of funding for gender affirming care,” he said.
Joshua Block, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project who represented the plaintiffs, said the executive order had “sown fear among transgender youth and confusion among their providers.”
“Today’s decision should restore both their access to healthcare and protections under the Constitution,” Block said in a statement. “Providers who’ve suspended healthcare for their transgender patients should be left with no doubt that they can lift those suspensions and continue to provide healthcare and act in their best medical judgment without risking their funding or worse.”
Harrison Fields, principal deputy press secretary for the White House, said in a statement after the ruling that President Trump’s executive orders “will hold up in court because every action of the Trump-Vance administration is completely lawful.”
“Any legal challenge against it is nothing more than an attempt to undermine the will of the American people, who overwhelming elected President Trump to secure the border, revitalize the economy, and restore common-sense policies,” Fields stated.
The judge’s temporary restraining order will apply for 14 days. Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney for Lambda Legal, which is also representing the plaintiffs, said attorneys plan to ask for a preliminary injunction before the restraining order expires.
Days after Trump signed the order last month, hospitals in New York City, Colorado, Virginia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, announced that they were suspending or reviewing their transition-related care for people under 19.
In response, the White House said in a statement that the order was “already having its intended effect — preventing children from being maimed and sterilized by adults perpetuating a radical, false claim that they can somehow change a child’s sex.”
The American Civil Liberties Union filed their lawsuit last week on behalf of two transgender young adults who are 18 and five families of trans minors. The suit argued that the order — along with another executive order Trump signed declaring that the federal government will only recognize two unchangeable sexes — discriminated against trans people because it allows the same treatments for other health conditions for people under 19 who are not transgender.
The ACLU also argued that the order seeking to restrict care is illegal and unconstitutional because the president does not have the authority to withhold federal funds that have been previously approved by Congress.
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