Judge Rebukes RFK Jr. for Plan to Cut Gender Care for Minors (1)

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was scrutinized by a federal judge for causing “chaos and terror” by attempting to withhold federal funding for hospitals that provide gender affirming care for minors.

“Unserious leaders are unsafe,” US District Court for the District of Oregon Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai wrote in a scathing opinion filed Saturday cutting down Kennedy’s effort. Kasubhai in his order said Kennedy ran afoul of his legal authority in issuing a declaration to slash federal funding, a move that required the nation’s top health official to undergo a more formal regulatory process.

“This case illustrates that when a leader acts without authority and in the absence of the rule of law, he acts with cruelty,” Kasubhai said.

The legal battle follows a December announcement that the HHS was rolling out a plan to curb access to gender-affirming care. That plan included the declaration, in which Kennedy claimed his pronouncement trumped state and national standards of care.

The US Department of Health and Human Services “will continue to fight to protect our nation’s children, as this Biden-appointed judge’s ruling puts radical ideology ahead of their safety,” HHS spokesperson Emily G. Hilliard said Monday in a statement.

The ruling marks a victory for a coalition of states who sued the Trump administration for trying to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funding from hospitals providing gender-affirming care.

New York, California, Illinois and other states in the lawsuit argue that Kennedy’s declaration—which claimed that "[s]ex-rejecting procedures for children and adolescents are neither safe nor effective"—violated mandatory notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act. The states also claimed the declaration illegally supersedes state authority over medical standards of care.

The states urged the court to block Kennedy from not only implementing the declaration, but any similar policies as well.

Kasubhai in his ruling was open to these concerns.

“Defendants made numerous statements in their briefing and during oral argument suggesting that they believe OIG would still be able to exclude healthcare providers for providing gender-affirming care to minors even in the absence of the Kennedy Declaration,” the judge wrote, referring to the HHS Office of Inspector General. He also added that public statements and social media posts “leave no room for doubt that Defendants will attempt to circumvent this Court’s vacatur of the Kennedy Declaration.”

Kasubhai also said Kennedy lacked “legal authority to unilaterally and categorically supersede statewide standards of care governing gender-affirming care,” blocking the HHS secretary from attempting to do so again.

Kasubhai previously issued the order from the bench in March, granting the states’ motion for summary judgment in the case. Saturday’s opinion marks the formal written version of the order.

The case is Oregon v. Kennedy, D. Or., No. 6:25-cv-02409-MTK, order and opinion filed 4/18/26