CA judge clears hospital for youth trans treatments as NY facility halts program

A judge in California is demanding that a children’s hospital in San Diego continue providing transgender care to minors for now, extending a temporary restraining order as hospitals in California and New York take starkly different approaches to President Donald Trump’s executive order threatening to pull federal funding.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Matthew Braner last week agreed to extend his temporary restraining order for 15 days, allowing Rady Children’s Health to continue providing hormone therapy and puberty blockers to minors despite efforts by the Trump administration to ban such treatments and fears of losing federal funding.

The judge’s order comes after a hospital in New York City announced this week that it would discontinue its Transgender Youth Health Program in part due to the “current regulatory environment”; This is a result of Trump’s executive order aimed at banning transgender medical procedures for minors.

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At issue is the executive order Trump signed shortly after taking office, aimed at ending transgender treatment of minors. In December, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a new rule that would cut off federal Medicare and Medicaid funding for hospitals that provide “gender rejection procedures” to children under 18.

NYU Langone Health, one of New York City’s largest hospital networks, said the change was due to what hospital officials described as the “current regulatory environment.”

Meanwhile, attorneys for the San Diego hospital argued in court that resuming treatments for minors, even temporarily, could expose the hospital to immediate risk and threaten Rady’s Medicaid and Medicare funding, a critical source of revenue given its status as Southern California’s largest provider of children’s health.

After hearing from both sides, Braner acknowledged that Rady and other hospitals likely feel stuck “between a rock and a hard place” due to intense scrutiny from the Trump administration.

Still, he said, concerns about loss of funding could be quickly addressed if that scenario were to occur. “We will clear our calendar and hold a hearing within 24 hours of any notification from HHS,” he said, according to local news outlets.

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This split image shows Trump and protesters advocating transgender treatments for minors. (Getty Images)

The assurances given by the judge, whose extension was scheduled to last until March 15, did little to reassure Rady’s lawyers; Lawyers voiced the risks of noncompliance, telling the judge that continuing treatments even for a short period of time could pose a “catastrophic risk.”

The legal pushback comes as more than 40 hospitals in the U.S. have so far restricted such treatments to minors, in accordance with the administration’s orders. data Compiled by STAT News earlier this month.

“Given the recent departure of our medical director and the current regulatory environment, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue our Transgender Youth Health Program,” NYU Langone officials said in a statement this week announcing the hospital was ending transgender treatment of minors. he said.

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Hospital staff at Children’s National Hospital watch as U.S. Navy Blue Angels and U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds fly over the D.C. area on May 2, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)

“We are committed to helping patients in our care manage this change. This does not impact our ongoing pediatric mental health care programs,” the hospital said.

Rady officials in San Diego had previously announced that the hospital would also stop treatment for minors in line with the direction of the Trump administration. The announcement prompted California Attorney General Rob Bonta to file a lawsuit earlier this year.