A federal judge has overturned the Trump administration’s ban on gender-affirming care for children, dealing another blow to Robert F Kennedy Jr’s agenda as health secretary. In a 49-page decision, US District Judge Mustafa T Kasubhai decried Kennedy’s “wanton disregard” for the law, which he said “causes very real harm to very real people”. The ruling also bars the administration from implementing similar policies under different names to restrict care nationally by withholding federal funding.
The ban, announced by Kennedy in December, sought to suspend Medicaid and Medicare funding for any health system providing paediatric gender-affirming care, effectively outlawing the practice across the country. Kennedy invoked a regulation allowing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to exclude providers from federal healthcare programmes when they no longer meet “professionally recognised standards of healthcare”. The rule was enforced immediately, bypassing usual rule-making procedures.
Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, described the ruling as “incredibly powerful” and “far-reaching”. Jan Oosting, an associate professor of nursing at City University of New York, called it “a huge, huge step forward” for families and providers. Khadijah Silver, director of gender justice and health equity at Lawyers for Good Government, said they were “so overwhelmingly ecstatic” at the decision.
At least 40 health systems had stopped providing gender-affirming care in recent weeks due to the threat of losing federal funding. Oregon and 21 other states sued the administration, arguing the Kennedy declaration overstepped federal authority. The government claimed the declaration was merely Kennedy’s personal opinion, but the judge dismissed this as “a bald-faced lie” and an attempt to “bully or gaslight” the court.
