SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In their 37th lawsuit against the Trump administration, a coalition of 17 states and the District of Columbia sued Friday over a pair of executive orders President Donald Trump signed earlier this year to restrict access to health care for transgender and nonbinary youth. The lawsuit alleges the orders violate the Constitution and undermine state laws requiring equal access to medical treatment.
“The directives misleadingly referred to gender-affirming care as fraud and exploitation and ordered the federal Department of Justice civil division to use all available resources to investigate doctors, hospitals and others providing it,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Friday during a news conference announcing the lawsuit.
“Their demands that our health care providers discriminate against transgender individuals and deny them access to medically necessary health care is cruel and irresponsible.”
On his first day in office in January, Trump signed an executive order to recognize only two sexes and called for the U.S. government to end its support for “gender ideology.” A second executive order described gender-care treatments for individuals under the age of 19 as “chemical and surgical mutilation” and directed the Justice Department to enforce the order.
In April, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memorandum titled “Preventing the Mutiliation of American Children” to provide guidance to DOJ employees to enforce Trump’s executive order, including the enforcement of laws outlawing female genital mutilation, investigating medical providers and pharmaceutical companies, and establishing a federal and state coalition against child “mutilation.”
The states allege the laws the Justice Department cited to justify its enforcement actions against transgender health care do not apply. They say there is no federal law that prohibits gender-affirming care and that California and the other states represented in the case have laws that specifically protect the right to gender-affirming care as medically necessary health care.
The complaint names Trump, Bondi and the Justice Department as defendants.
“On day one, President Trump took decisive action to stop the despicable mutilation and chemical castration of children — which everyday Americans resoundingly support,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Spectrum News. “The president has the lawful authority to protect America’s vulnerable children through executive action, and the administration looks forward to ultimate victory on this issue.”
A Justice Department spokesperson told Spectrum News, “As Attorney General Bondi has made clear, this Department of Justice will use every legal and law enforcement tool available to protect innocent children from being mutilated under the guise of ‘care.’”
California co-led the suit with the attorneys general of Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York. Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia, as well as the governor of Pennsylvania, are also part of the lawsuit that was filed in a federal district court in Massachusetts. All the plaintiffs are Democrats.
The states are asking the court to block the Trump administration’s enforcement of the executive orders.
The lawsuit comes following the closure of transgender health care programs across the country following the executive orders and the DOJ’s enforcement announcement. In July, Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles closed its gender-transition care center. The largest such program in the country, CHLA served 3,000 patients.
According to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, at least 25 states have laws or policies that ban gender-transition care for people up to the age of 18.
Note: This article has been updated with a statements from the White House and Justice Department.