XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.transgendered
XPost: or.politics, sac.politics

Sixteen..?? Lol! That's all? Any state suing Trump over this is a
paedophile friendly state and all other stated should stop doing
business with them. No food, no gas, no water, no electricity.
Nothing. Cut them off at the knees.

Officials in 16 states and Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit Friday to
block the Trump administration’s investigations into hospitals and
doctors who provide transition-related care to minors.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, argues that the administration, by threatening to
prosecute providers, is trying to institute a national ban on puberty
blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries for transgender minors even
though Congress has enacted no such federal ban.

“The federal government is running a cruel and targeted harassment
campaign against providers who offer lawful, lifesaving care to
children,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the coalition of states in the suit, said in a statement. “This
administration is ruthlessly targeting young people who already face
immense barriers just to be seen and heard, and are putting countless
lives at risk in the process. In New York and nationwide, we will never
stop fighting for the dignity, safety, and basic rights of the
transgender community.”

More than half of states have laws that restrict or completely ban
transition care for minors. Care is legal in all of the states that
joined Friday’s complaint. They are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania,
as well as Washington, D.C.

Within days of his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an
executive order seeking to restrict such care nationwide for anyone
under 19 years old. Among its provisions, the order sought to bar
federal funding from going to medical schools and hospitals that provide
such care. As a result of the order, several hospitals announced they
were pausing transition care for people under 19. Multiple judges
blocked that part of the order, and many hospitals resumed care.

Despite the injunction, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo in
April that said the Justice Department would use a variety of existing
laws to investigate providers of gender-affirming care for minors.
According to Friday’s complaint, the DOJ has issued guidance that “threatens baseless civil and criminal prosecution” of providers, and,
just last month, issued more than 20 subpoenas to providers of such care
across the country demanding that they give the federal government
private patient information.

The lawsuit, which names Trump, Bondi and the DOJ as defendants,
challenges Trump’s executive order seeking to restrict access to
transition care for minors, Bondi’s April memo and another June memo
from Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate that directed the DOJ’s
Civil Division to prioritize investigations into doctors who provide
such care.

The complainants, 16 attorneys general and the governor of Pennsylvania,
argue that transition care is legally protected in all of their states
and that federal attempts to block the care “trammel on State power” in violation of the Tenth Amendment. They also argue that the
administration’s actions force providers to make “an impossible choice” of either defying the federal threats or complying and violating their state’s laws against discrimination in medical care.

“These efforts to chill the provision of healthcare for adolescents —
even in states where such care is legal and protected — show that the
Agency Defendants have adopted and are engaged in a systematic effort to leverage the threat of criminal and civil enforcement to eliminate
medically necessary care for transgender adolescents in the United
States,” the complaint states.

Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that
Americans support Trump's efforts to stop "the despicable mutilation and chemical castration of children," using inflammatory language to
describe transition care.

"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," Rogers said.

A DOJ spokesperson, when asked to comment on the lawsuit, said in a
statement, "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.’”

As the DOJ has opened investigations into some providers of transition
care for minors, a rising number of hospitals — including those in
states without laws that restrict trans health care — have announced
that they plan to close their youth gender clinics.

Just in the last two months, the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU,
Yale New Haven Health, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Children’s National Hospital, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, UChicago
Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles have announced they
will end gender-affirming care programs for minors and, in most cases,
anyone under 19.

The complaint notes that the administration has celebrated these
announcements, pointing to a press release from the administration last
week titled, “President Trump Promised to End Child Sexual Mutilation —
and He Delivered.”

“These changes have been touted by Defendants as precisely what was
intended by their unlawful and disingenuous targeting: the end of
healthcare for transgender individuals under 19,” the complaint states.

The plaintiffs ask the court to declare unconstitutional the portion of Trump’s order that would bar federal funding from going to hospitals
that provide transition care to people under 19 and prohibit the DOJ
from enforcing the memos from Bondi and Shumate.

Nearly all major medical associations in the United States, such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association, support access to transition-related
care for minors and oppose restrictions on it.

Some European countries have restricted access to such care, but only
the United Kingdom has indefinitely banned new prescriptions of puberty blockers to treat minors for gender dysphoria, the medical term for the distress caused by a misalignment between someone’s birth sex and gender identity.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/states-sue-trump- administration-trans-care-investigations-rcna222287

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