NYU Langone Health remains silent three weeks after the New York attorney general’s deadline for the medical center to restore gender-affirming care for minors.
Attorney General Letitia James has not announced an investigation into the medical center despite threatening “further action” if it failed to resume offering puberty-blocking medication and hormone therapy to minors by March 11. Her office previously alleged that ending transgender care for minors may have violated state anti-discrimination laws.
In a March 18 letter to James, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche argued NYU Langone did not break state law, which prohibits gender- and disability-based discrimination. He also claimed that the U.S. Department of Justice would “take all necessary actions to defend the hospital’s decision” if the medical center faced a lawsuit from James’ office.
“Representatives of NYU Langone have reported to the Department that the hospital has reviewed these letters and does not intend to offer sex-rejecting procedures to minors,” Blanche wrote.
NYU Langone is among more than 40 hospitals nationwide that have terminated some form of gender-affirming care for youth since President Donald Trump took office. The medical center’s website currently says that it provides psychological counseling for transgender adolescents and their families.
Christine Petrin, a physician who provides gender-affirming care for adults at Settlement Health in East Harlem and the former president of Doctors for America, worries NYU Langone’s decision might cause other medical providers to follow suit, shrinking the list of treatment options for transgender minors.
“I don’t know how much longer those programs are going to be open,” Petrin told WSN. “It leaves us providers in a position of determining, ‘If I can’t provide this care, am I also breaking a state law by being put in that position?’”
NYU Langone stopped offering hormone therapy and puberty blockers to minors on Feb. 17 after the Trump administration threatened to pull Medicare and Medicaid funding from hospitals that treat transgender youth. The next day, about three dozen students and advocates attended an hourlong rally outside the Stonewall Inn. Around 80 people later gathered at a March protest outside NYU Langone’s Kips Bay location.
In addition to the demonstrations, more than 70 New York state senators, state assembly members and city council members signed a February letter demanding that NYU Langone “immediately reinstate” gender affirming care for minors.
On March 19, a judge ruled in favor of officials from 21 states, led by James, who argued that the federal government had overstepped its powers to regulate state-level medical care. However, NYU Langone did not resume its transgender care program after the ruling because its decision was voluntary.
“There are a lot of families that specifically travel to states like New York to receive this kind of care,” Petrin said. “You can only imagine what it’s like for an entire family to uproot themselves and come here hoping to receive the treatment that their child desperately needs, and then have that either not start or be cut off right in the middle.”
NYU Langone and James’ office did not respond to WSN’s requests for comment.