Trump Administration Blocked From Denying Minors Gender-Related Care

Once again, a federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from turning right-wing ideology into policies and laws and prohibited the administration from continuing to pick and choose when states’ rights matter.

This time, the judge had to step in to protect trans people, specifically, those who are minors.

According to the New York Times, Judge Mustafa Kasubhai of U.S. District Court made his decision after a six-hour hearing in the case in Eugene, Ore., on Thursday, ruling that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services, had overstepped his legal authority when he declared last December that providers of gender-transition medical treatments for minors “do not meet professionally recognized standards.” RFK’s department also indicated that it would investigate institutions that continued to provide these treatments, threatening to withhold federal Medicare and Medicaid funds from them.

For the record, President Donald Trump and the loyal stooges he lined his Cabinet with keep trying to withhold funding from any and all schools, healthcare providers, scientific researchers and other entities they accuse of engaging in DEI practices or anything else they consider to be “woke.” And nearly every time the administration has been taken to court over the withholding of these funds, a judge steps in and orders it to dole out what are typically congressionally approved funds, meaning it’s Congress that has the authority to make these decisions, not the executive branch.

This isn’t the first time a judge has had to intervene to spare the LGBTQ+ community from Trump’s administrative bigotry.

In June of last year, a federal judge blocked an executive order signed by Trump pulled federal funding from LGBTQ-related nonprofits. Later that same month, New York Attorney General Letitia James defeated the administration in court after she joined what she called “a coalition of 15 other attorneys general in suing the administration after it terminated millions of dollars in grant funding for previously approved research projects, including projects focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), LGBTQ+ health, and vaccine hesitancy.”

Mind you, this is the same administration that cut funding for Black infant health research last year, labeling it a DEI initiative, despite the well-documented fact that infant mortality rates in the U.S. are disproportionately high among Black babies, and the fact that Black and Latino babies are more vulnerable than their white counterparts to suffer serious, life-threatening illnesses such as upper respiratory infection (URI). That decision, by the way, came from the same  RFK Jr. who thinks Black people don’t need vaccines as much as white people because we have more resilient immune systems, a falsehood similar to the absurdities white medical professionals have cited to justify providing Black patients with a lesser quality of care.

So, you know, maybe a health secretary with no medical background, who still manages to dabble in medical racism, shouldn’t be making decisions about what care trans people do or don’t need either.

From the Times:

Twenty-one states, all led by Democrats, had filed a lawsuit over Mr. Kennedy’s issuing of the 12-page declaration, claiming that the statement interfered with the power of states to regulate the practice of medicine within their borders. The declaration states that it “supersedes” statewide or national standards of care and that “sex-rejecting procedures for children and adolescents are neither safe nor effective as a treatment modality for gender dysphoria, gender incongruence, or other related disorders in minors.”

The states asserted that the federal government had attempted to unilaterally establish a national medical standard, violating the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires federal agencies to act within the bounds of authority delegated to them by Congress.

The Trump administration also argued that it has the authority to bar providers of medical care that fail to meet professionally recognized standards from participating in Medicare and Medicaid. That power, the government argued, exists simultaneously with the traditional power of states to regulate medicine.

What “professionally recognized standards” though? Certainly, the administration can’t be speaking about the standards put forth by non-medical professionals, who declared based on their misinterpretation of a medical studies review that Tylenol caused autism, then had to retract the narrative after repeating it for weeks.

Are the professionals in the room with us, or are we still taking health leadership from the health secretary who has said plainly that people should not take medical advice from him?

Anyway, the judge wasn’t buying it.

“The notion that ‘I will go forward and issue a declaration and see if we can get away with it’ is not a principle of governance that adheres to the overarching commitment to a democratic republic that requires the rule of law to be regarded and respected and honored as a sacred,” Judge Kasubhai said.

Pushing the limits of lies and authoritarianism to “see if we can get away with it” has pretty much been the federal government’s core strategy under Trump’s second term.

May federal judges with good sense and respect for the rule of law keep serving as the nation’s last line of defense against this regime.

SEE ALSO:

DOJ Wants To Take Guns From Trans People

Pride Is Still Protest: World Pride in the Era of Trump 2.0