1 week ago
11
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
The lawsuit comes amid escalating efforts by the U.S. government to restrict the availability of certain services for transgender adolescents.
Aug. 1, 2025, 1:51 p.m. ET
A coalition of states led by Democrats, including New York and California, sued Friday to stop the Trump administration from investigating doctors and hospitals who provide children with medical treatments for gender transition.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Massachusetts, comes amid escalating efforts by the federal government to put an end to the availability of puberty blockers, hormones and gender-related surgeries for transgender adolescents.
In the past two months, the F.B.I. has asked the public to call its tip line about doctors “who mutilate” children “under the guise of gender-affirming care.” The Justice Department sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics that perform transgender medical procedures on minors, demanding confidential patient information. And the Federal Trade Commission is examining whether “practitioners of ‘gender-affirming care’ may be actively deceiving consumers” by making unsubstantiated claims about the effectiveness of such care, or by omitting warnings about risks to pediatric patients.
Some medical experts have concerns about the long-term side effects of puberty blockers and hormones on brain development, bone density and fertility.
Federal agencies served at least two subpoenas to major New York hospital systems in recent weeks — Mount Sinai Health and NYU Langone Health — as part of the inquiries into pediatric transgender medicine, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose subpoenas or had been told about their existence in confidence. Representatives for Mount Sinai and NYU Langone declined to comment.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit, filed by attorneys general for 15 states and the governor of Pennsylvania, asks the federal court to declare that the government policies that prompted the investigations into pediatric transgender care were unlawful and must not be enforced. The lawsuit argues that the Justice Department’s actions “reflect an unconstitutional attempt to infringe on the states’ power to regulate medicine.”
