Trump Agencies Deny Threatening Trans Care Related Funding (1)

Three US agencies have denied that they’re taking steps to implement President Donald Trump‘s executive orders prohibiting federal funding of gender-related care for youths.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration told the US District Court for the District of Maryland on Monday that they haven’t violated a preliminary injunction that prohibited them from taking steps to withhold money from medical centers that provide gender-affirming care to people under 19-years old.

Transgender advocacy groups PFLAG Inc. and GLMA, along with individual transgender plaintiffs and their parents, asked Judge Brendan Abell Hurson March 7 for an emergency order requiring the US Department of Health and Human Services’ subagencies to withdraw notices intended—those suing said—to coerce hospitals to immediately shut down their provision of gender-affirming medical care.

The suit is part of a wave of litigation over Trump’s early-term executive orders, including those purporting to end birthright citizenship; eliminate federal diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs; and freeze foreign aid.

The Maryland plaintiffs are challenging a “gender identity” order that prohibits using federal money to “promote gender ideology” and a “health-care” order mandating that agencies strip institutions that provide gender-affirming care for minors of their federal grants, even if they’re not related to or used to pay for such care.

Hurson halted the orders’ implementation on March 4, saying the plaintiffs were likely to win on claims that Trump exceeded his authority and that the orders were contrary to existing statutes and infringed the individuals’ equal protection rights.

“Seeking to effectively enact legislation by executive order clearly exceeds the bounds of Article II and thus does not serve the public interest,” he said.

‘Harbinger’

The agencies violated that injunction the next day by sending providers notices with the subject line, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” the plaintiffs said.

But the notices don’t violate the injunction, the agencies said. They “merely inform interested parties of HHS’s concerns about the proliferation in use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery to treat children with gender dysphoria and certain research and data on the potentially harmful effects of such interventions,” they said.

The notices said only that the agencies “may” take action, but didn’t condition, withhold, or terminate any federal funding to the recipients. They weren’t “a harbinger” of future agency action, the agencies said.

The agencies assured Hurson that they will follow his substantive and procedural requirements, including the preliminary injunction.

The plaintiffs disputed the agencies’ claims in a reply brief, saying the notices were “overt threats,” not statements of “internal policy considerations.” These threats to end funding for gender-affirming care are precisely what prompted Hurson to issue the preliminary injunction, they said.

A second federal judge in Washington state mostly blocked the orders’ enforcement on Feb. 28.

Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Maryland, Jenner & Block LLP, and Hogan Lovells US LLP represent the plaintiffs.

The case is PFLAG, Inc. v. Trump, D. Md., No. 25-cv-337, opposition brief 3/10/25.