New Yorkers took to Union Square over the weekend to protest President Trump’s sweeping anti-trans executive order, which defines gender as binary and determined at birth, and threatens to withhold funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to people under the age of 19. According to the New York Times, thousands of parents, children, and activists gathered around the George Washington Statue on Saturday, including Zohran Mamdani, a progressive Queens assemblyman and candidate for mayor. “This is a trial of all of us to see who we are willing to give up,” Mamdani said. “And our answer is, no one.”
The consequences of Trump’s order came into sharp focus for New Yorkers last week as major city hospitals apparently changed their policies in response to it. According to families of two transgender youths, NYU Langone Health reportedly cancelled their appointments for puberty blockers as part of their gender-affirming care, treatment which the hospital had been offering since at least 2020 through their Transgender Youth Health Program. New York-Presbyterian, the city’s largest hospital, removed references to gender-affirming care for young people from its webpage last week, which archived versions of the site show included “puberty suppression and gender-affirming hormone treatment” through the hospital’s COMPASS program.
Neither organization has issued any statement concerning the reports. New York-Presbyterian had a letter on their website published in 2022 from their Chair of Pediatrics affirming the organization’s commitment to “fight against legislation which threatens [transgender youths’] physical and emotional health by limiting access to medically necessary, and potentially lifesaving, care.” When the news outlet THE CITY inquired about the hospital’s policy in light of the letter, it was removed from the website. Both NYU Langone and New York-Presbyterian, like most hospitals across the country, receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government every year in the form of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements.
New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, sent a letter to the state’s health care providers warning that by complying with the Trump administration’s directive, they could be running afoul of New York’s anti-discrimination laws. According to James’ letter, “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.” A dozen other state attorneys general have issued similar statements following Trump’s executive order, including Rob Bonta of California.
