NYU Langone closed its Transgender Youth Health Program last month.
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The New York attorney general’s office has told NYU Langone Health to resume providing puberty blockers and hormones to transgender youth, multiple media outlets reported, after the New York University–connected academic hospital network closed its Transgender Youth Health Program last month under pressure from the Trump administration.
“New York state laws prohibit discrimination based on a patient’s membership in a protected class,” wrote Darsana Srinivasan, an official in the AG’s office, in a Feb. 25 letter to NYU Langone, The New York Times reported. NYU Langone spokespeople didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment on whether it will resume the treatments.
In December, the Health and Human Services Department said in a news release that it planned to “bar hospitals from performing sex-rejecting procedures on children under age 18 as a condition of participation in Medicare and Medicaid programs.” Losing that federal funding would cut off a huge source of revenue for these institutions.
The department said it was implementing an executive order from January of last year, in which President Trump ordered the HHS secretary to “take all appropriate actions to end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children,” and specifically suggested changing Medicaid and Medicare requirements. Early last month, then–HHS general counsel Mike Stuart posted on X that he was going after hospitals that perform “sex-rejecting procedures for minors,” adding that “we will not stop until every single child is protected from the destruction of the integrity of God’s chosen human body.”
Srinivasan, in her letter, noted that rules ending federal funding haven’t yet taken effect, writing that “NYU Langone’s change in policy is self-imposed,” The New York Times reported.
