The Mamdani administration is entering into two contracts totaling $8.9 million to provide “gender-affirming” sex reassignment care to transgender patients under the age of 18.
The move backs a policy the federal Department of Justice has challenged as medically dangerous and illegal.
The city Department of Health identified two vendors — Callen-Lorde and Nonprofit Organization for Philanthropic Initiatives — to provide the services in contracts that run from 2027-29.
“This includes the prescription and administration of puberty-blockers and hormone replacement therapy to all minor patients for whom such services are medically necessary based on the prevailing standards of care,” the DOH said in a public notice.
“Services will be performed by qualified medical providers with current New York State licensure, and will be provided consistent with state laws governing parental consent.”
Critics blasted Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s team, claiming they are trying to circumvent the federal ban on gender care services for minors.
“They’re making an ideological decision instead of a medical decision,” said state Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar.
“They’re trying to pull a fast one. New York City thinks it is its own national government. It further isolates us from the rest of the country.”
Kassar believes such treatment of transgender youths shouldn’t be administered without parental consent similar to the way abortions would be handled.
Two major city hospital systems — NYU Langone and Mount Sinai — agreed to end their “pediatric gender-affirming care” or sexual reassignment practice for minors as they faced scrutiny from President Trump’s DOJ, which calls the operations “sex-rejecting” procedures
The hospitals faced the threat of losing millions of dollars in federal research grants and Medicaid and Medicare funding.
The city Health Department and Mamdani’s office had no immediate comment.
New York, which has a large and politically active LGBT community, has defended such care and defied the trend despite a backlash to the procedures elsewhere in the country.
Some 27 states passed laws banning or limiting gender-related surgeries for transgender youth, the KFF health policy research group reports. A few of the laws are being challenged in court.
Colorado residents will vote in a ballot referendum in November on whether to become the 28th state to outlaw gender-related surgeries for people under the age of 18.
The medical community is divided on whether gender changing care should be performed on transgender youths.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons recommends “that surgeons delay gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery until a patient is at least 19 years old.”
In a February statement, the plastic surgeons’ group said “the natural course of pediatric gender dysphoria remains poorly understood.”
But the American Medical Association said it opposes laws and policies “that criminalize, prohibit or otherwise impede the provision of evidence-based, gender-affirming care, including laws and policies that penalize parents and guardians who support minors seeking and/or receiving gender-affirming care.”
The AMA said it advocates for federal, state, and local laws and policies to protect access to evidence-based care for gender dysphoria and gender incongruence and supports shielding doctors from any criminal or civil iabiilty for providing “evidence-based, genderaffirming care.”
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