After Rady Children’s Hospital announced its plans to end gender-affirming care, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit to reverse the termination. On Feb. 11, a Superior Court judge ruled in favor of Bonta, ordering the hospital to continue providing gender-affirming care to individuals under the age of 19. Rady must abide by this order until March 10, when the next court hearing is scheduled.
“Gender-affirming care” refers to medical services such as puberty blockers, hormones, and therapy. Superior Court Judge Matthew Braner’s ruling requires the hospital to continue providing these services. Gender-affirming surgeries, however, are not included in Braner’s order.
Rady first announced in early July 2025 that it would stop accepting new patients seeking gender-affirming care, but would continue to serve existing transgender patients under 19. On Jan. 20, the hospital issued a second announcement, stating that it also planned to end gender-affirming care for existing transgender patients — 1,450 individuals — effective Feb. 6.
Bonta’s lawsuit alleged that this decision violated the terms of its merger last year with the Children’s Hospital at Mission and the Children’s Hospital of Orange County. The deal stipulated that Rady and its facilities would continue to provide existing gender-affirming services.
“RCH is the sole remaining large pediatric provider of gender-affirming care in Southern California, and alternative providers … are increasingly scarce,” Bonta said in the lawsuit.
Some LGBTQ+ advocacy groups have criticized Bonta for focusing the lawsuit on merger violations, instead of on preventing discrimination against transgender people.
Kanan Durham, executive director of Pride at the Pier, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group based in Orange County, explained his broader concerns about this lawsuit.
“We have legal protection of gender-affirming care on the books,” he said. “But if Rob Bonta does not feel confident in his ability to win a case based on those laws, do we really have those laws?”
Bonta’s lawsuit does not argue that the termination of gender-affirming care violates the legislation Durham referred to.
During the hearing, Jason Strabo, an attorney representing the hospital, said that its decision to stop accepting new patients and subsequently end care for all patients was in response to threats from the federal government to withhold funding if it continued to provide gender-affirming care.
On Dec. 18, 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released a statement to hospitals nationwide affirming that he has the authority to “exclude individuals or entities from participation in any federal health care program” if he determines that its practices fail to meet “professionally recognized standards of health care.”
Kennedy defines gender-affirming care as failing to meet these standards — “Sex-rejecting procedures for children and adolescents are neither safe nor effective as a treatment modality for gender dysphoria.”
In his ruling, Braner called the hospital’s actions “pre-emptive,” stating that the hospital was not in immediate danger of losing its federal funding. If the HHS issues notices of cuts to Rady before the next hearing on March 10, Braner said that he would hold a hearing to allow the hospital to argue its case before the cuts go into effect.
According to the California Department of Health Care Access and Information, Rady receives nearly $500 million dollars each year from Medicare.