By Seven families with transgender children sued the Trump administration Tuesday over an executive order meant to broadly restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender children and teenagers up to 19 years old, calling it and other recent orders targeting trans rights “unlawful and unconstitutional.”
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a Baltimore federal court, argues Trump’s executive order infringes on the rights of parents to make medical decisions for their children and unlawfully seeks to withhold funds that Congress previously authorized.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the private law firms Hogan Lovells and Jenner & Block represent the plaintiffs.
“Under our Constitution, it is Congress, not the President, who is vested with the power of the purse,” the lawsuit states. “The President does not have unilateral power to withhold federal funds that have been previously authorized by Congress and signed into law, and the President does not have the power to impose his own conditions on the use of funds when Congress has not delegated to him the power to do so.”
PFLAG, an organization supporting LGBTQ people and families, and GLMA, a network of LGBTQ health professionals, are also plaintiffs in the case, filed one week after Trump signed an order directing federal agencies to cut government funding for transition-related care. The order would impact programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Tricare, the military’s health program.
Kristen Chapman, whose 17-year-old daughter Willow is a plaintiff in the case, said Wednesday in a news release that the family moved from Tennessee to Richmond, Virginia after Tennessee’s Republican-dominated Legislature passed a law banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors in 2023. That law is at the center of a Supreme Court case that will decide whether such bans are constitutional.
Chapman said she still struggled to find a provider in Virginia that would accept the families’ Medicaid insurance and that paying for Willow’s medical care out-of-pocket had become “prohibitively expensive.”
“I tried for months to get an appointment at VCU, and I finally got an appointment for January 29, 2025,” Chapman said Wednesday. “The day before our appointment, President Trump signed the executive order at issue in this case. The next day, just a few hours before our appointment, VCU told us they would not be able to provide Willow with care. I thought Virginia would be a safe place for me and my daughter. Instead, I am heartbroken, tired, and scared.”
VCU Health and Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU suspended gender-affirming medications and surgical procedures for patients younger than 19 in response to Trump’s executive order, according to a statement on the medical center’s website.
“Our doors remain open to all patients and their families for screening, counseling, mental health care and all other health care needs,” the statement reads.
A handful of other hospitals across the country said they would pause or review care because of Trump’s order, which directed federal agencies to strip government funding from medical institutions, including medical schools and hospitals, that provide gender-affirming care to trans minors.
The White House touted reports that some hospitals had suspended care as a victory for the administration on Monday.
In a letter to health care providers and organizations that receive federal funds, New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday warned that denying care to transgender residents violates state laws protecting against discrimination based on sex and gender identity.
“Electing to refuse services to a class of individuals based on their protected status, such as withholding the availability of services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity or their diagnosis of gender dysphoria, while offering such services to cisgender individuals, is discrimination under New York law,” James wrote in the letter.
Gender-affirming care for transgender adults and minors is considered medically necessary by every major medical organization, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
This story was updated at 4:54 p.m.