Twenty-one states led by Democrats sued on Wednesday to block a Department of Health and Human Services plan to bar federal payments from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program for gender-transition medication and surgery to transgender adolescents.
The new rule, announced last month, is set to go into effect in October.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, argues that the new rule oversteps the Trump administration’s authority and fails to justify its restrictions. The suit said the rule violates the law by blocking reimbursements for treatments that some states have determined to be medically necessary.
“We will not stand by as the Trump administration oversteps its authority and twists the facts to justify its bad-faith agenda against transgender Americans,’’ Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, said in a statement. “We will continue to fight to secure access to medically necessary care and protect transgender individuals’ abilities to prosper as their authentic selves.”
The Health and Human Services Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
In a report issued last year, the federal health department said that the risks of gender transition treatments — which include hormone therapies, drugs that block puberty and, in rare cases, surgery — outweigh any benefits. The report prioritized psychotherapy for minors who experience incongruence between their sex and gender identity.
The treatments are already banned in most Republican-led states, and have been the topic of fraught international debate among health authorities. But most major medical societies in the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, continue to support medical gender transition for young people who experience marked distress over their gender identity.
In a statement announcing the rule last month, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said, “Children deserve our protection, not experimental interventions that pose serious risks and convey no proven benefits.”
The new rule, first proposed last year, is the latest in a series of efforts by the Trump administration to block health providers from offering the treatments to youths in states where they are legal. A previous effort was derailed earlier this year, when a federal judge ruled that the administration could not bar hospitals that provide such treatment from receiving funds for other types of care from the major federal health payment programs on the basis of a declaration by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
According to a recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, the government spent about $100 million on gender transition treatments for minors over five years from 2019 through 2023. The analysis found that the rate of gender surgery among minors insured by Medicaid was extremely low, at 3.44 per 100,000 among 15- to 17-year-olds.
According to the lawsuit, the new rule would set an unlawful precedent that the executive branch can replace the judgment of state-licensed medical professionals by prohibiting reimbursement for treatment based on its own criteria.
“No federal agency has the power to directly regulate the practice of medicine — a traditional and congressionally recognized power reserved for the states,’’ Kwame Raoul, the attorney general of Illinois, said in a statement.
The post States Sue Over Move to End to Federal Funds for Youth Gender Transition Treatment appeared first on New York Times.
