It wasn\u2019t the first shoe to drop, and it wouldn\u2019t be the last.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/large-RFA_Sutter_Rally_BartNagel-1750.jpg\")
Honey Mahogany, the director of San Francisco\u2019s office of transgender initiatives, reads statements from young people receiving gender-affirming care at Sutter Health at the protest on Dec. 8. Courtesy: Rainbow Families Action<\/p>\n
In January, just months after Eric started getting care at Kaiser, President Donald Trump signed an executive order<\/a> directing federal agencies to defund what he called \u201cchemical and surgical mutilation\u201d of transgender kids under the age of 19. After a federal court stayed that order, Trump wielded other forms of pressure. In early April, his Department of Health and Human Services sent a letter to states<\/a> threatening review of any Medicaid spending on gender-affirming care.\u00a0<\/p>\n A couple of weeks later, his Department of Justice sent a letter<\/a> threatening criminal charges against anyone performing what the agency described as \u201cgenital mutilation.\u201d By early June<\/a>, the DOJ was issuing subpoenas to hospitals across the country that sought sensitive personal information about young people receiving gender-affirming care.<\/p>\n Perhaps most worrying for hospitals was the threat of defunding on an existential scale. In October, NPR obtained the draft text of a proposed rule<\/a> that would block all Medicaid and Medicare reimbursemen<\/a>t to hospitals that offered gender-affirming care to minors.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hospital systems survive thanks in great part to Medicare and Medicaid funding. According to the American Hospital Association, 97% of all California hospitals<\/a> get more than half of their inpatient care covered that way. Losing that reimbursement would be a catastrophic blow.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced<\/a> the publication of that draft rule, along with a slate of other initiatives designed to halt care for trans kids, what one of his deputies called \u201cvile sex-rejecting procedures.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTrump said he was going to eradicate gender ideology and there was a slew of stuff that came out,\u201d BP said. \u201cIt was \u2018flood the zone.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n First Stanford, then Kaiser, then Sutter<\/p>\n At 49, Calder Storm calls himself a \u201cyoung elder,\u201d part of the first generation with easy access to gender-affirming care. So when his trans teenager was ready to pursue care two years ago, Storm knew the ropes. It wasn\u2019t hard to find clinics at UC San Francisco, and later Stanford Health Care, that felt right for his daughter. Then, early last summer, everything changed.<\/p>\n Storm got a call from his daughter\u2019s clinic. \u201cShe has to be seen right now,\u201d a staffer said, even though his daughter wasn\u2019t due in for months. Storm later realized the clinician was hustling to get his daughter in before it was too late.<\/p>\n In late June, news reports<\/a> surfaced in which Stanford confirmed that it had \u201cpaused\u201d gender-affirming surgical care on June 2. Storm\u2019s family, who live in San Francisco, were never formally notified of the change. \u201cWe were all sort of reeling,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Storm and his partner quickly began the process of moving their daughter to the widely respected clinic at Kaiser. Before they could, Kaiser had also halted surgical care. \u201cThe Stanford Kaiser one-two punch was really a gut punch,\u201d he said. \u201cWe realized we really needed to get active on a local level.\u201d<\/p>\n Before all this happened, Storm had been focused on how to help other kids around the country get the kind of support his family took for granted. \u201cI truly thought I\u2019d be safe in California,\u201d he said. \u201cI was thinking, \u2018How do we support trans kids in red states like Texas?\u2019 And then there was a reckoning.\u201d<\/p>\n That sense of reckoning has led many families like Storm\u2019s to a small but rapidly growing group called Rainbow Families Action, which formed shortly after Trump\u2019s reelection. Its roots are in a support group, Rainbow Families, that formed around 2014 as a place for families with transgender kids to find each other for playdates, camps, and tips on great local doctors, Arne Johnson, an early member, told me. Increasingly, it\u2019s become a place to build political power, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n BP, Eric\u2019s mom, found her way to Rainbow Families Action right after Kaiser\u2019s pause, when she met Johnson at a private meeting of Kaiser parents. She said finding the organization was \u201clife-changing\u201d after experiencing \u201csuch despair and rage in the face of all these hateful words and actions against my child.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Calder Storm joined the group after what happened at Stanford. And Allison, an East Bay parent who asked to go by her middle name, made it to Rainbow Families and its action arm about a year and a half ago, when her daughter, now 14, first came out to her as trans. \u201cMy child is not out in our community, so I can\u2019t be out about her,\u201d Allison said. \u201cRainbow Families is so amazing in keeping us all connected.\u201d<\/p>\n Crucially, Rainbow Families was a place where parents would share information about doctors. When Allison joined, her daughter had already started male puberty, she said, \u201cand so we needed to act quickly to get her the care she needed.\u201d<\/p>\n UCSF had a months-long waitlist at the time, but at Sutter Health, a clinician was able to fit her in right away and get her kid the puberty blockers she needed. For her daughter, she said, it was a great relief. Over time, Allison became extremely loyal to her daughter\u2019s doctor there, whom she describes as deeply supportive, ready to explain all the details of any potential treatment to make sure her family is ready.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then, on Nov. 21, just weeks after Allison\u2019s daughter took the next step in her care and started gender-affirming hormones, Allison got a call. Sutter would no longer provide gender-affirming care to anyone under the age of 19, her child\u2019s doctor said, with a tentative stop date in less than three weeks \u2014 Dec. 10.<\/p>\n The families had reached a breaking point. Rainbow Families Action had sent letters and held small protests over the treatment restrictions by Stanford and Kaiser. This time, they turned out in numbers at the Sutter facility on Powell Street in Emeryville. More than 100 parents, kids and supporters showed up on a cold afternoon on Dec. 8 with their signs, their banners and their stories.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not a pawn,\u201d Eric told the crowd, his first time speaking at a political protest. \u201cI\u2019m a teenager who wants to grow up in a body that feels like his.\u201d<\/p>\n Within days, Sutter showed signs of backpedaling. Parents started getting word from doctors that Sutter might be postponing its decision to abandon gender-affirming care for minors. Appointments that had been mysteriously canceled were now back on the books.<\/p>\n Families would have, Allison said, \u201ca bit of breathing room.\u201d<\/p>\n What Kaiser, Stanford and Sutter say<\/p>\n Fighting all of these new restrictions can feel like fighting ghosts, with little direct communication from the hospitals that families had come to depend on. Appointments would simply be canceled, with no explanation. \u201cThe initial communication was very random,\u201d said Johnson, one of the leaders of Rainbow Families Action. \u201cThe doctors were in chaos and the families were in agony.\u201d<\/p>\n Nikki, the East Bay parent of a 14-year-old trans boy, read me the message her doctor sent her out of the blue one day in November \u2014 the day after Transgender Day of Remembrance, she recalls \u2014\u00a0through the Sutter patient portal. \u201cI am just hearing about this, trying to get parents\u2019 information to tell them personally because you may not have heard from Sutter,\u201d she read aloud. \u201cI\u2019m upset but it pales in comparison to how upset you must be. I\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n Then: \u201cPlease try not to panic. We \u2026 will do our best to help you.\u201d<\/p>\n When Nikki, who asked that we use only her first name, finally reached the doctor, it got even scarier. She recalls the doctor saying, \u201cThere are no protocols. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll have to call back your prescription. Your visits are going to be coded differently. I may not be able to check hormone levels.\u201d<\/p>\n Even now, it\u2019s been difficult to get clarity on what exactly the \u201cpauses\u201d at Kaiser and Stanford mean, and what exactly the status quo is at Sutter or UCSF.<\/p>\n Kaiser Permanente\u2019s statement was the most explicit, referencing a \u201csignificant focus by the federal government on gender-affirming care,\u201d and naming Trump\u2019s executive orders directing federal agencies to curtail access, hospital inquiries by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services, and the DOJ subpoenas sent to doctors and clinics.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the legal and regulatory environment for gender-affirming care continues to evolve, we must carefully consider the significant risks being created for health systems, clinicians, and patients under the age of 19 seeking this care,\u201d Kaiser\u2019s statement reads. \u201cAfter significant deliberation and consultation with internal and external experts, including our physicians, we made the difficult decision to pause surgical treatment for patients under the age of 19 in our hospitals and surgical centers,\u201d effective Aug. 29.\u00a0<\/p>\n All other gender-affirming care remains on offer, Kaiser told us, including, pivotally, hormone implants. Many parents I heard from were worried that those would be seen as a surgical intervention and halted.<\/p>\n Stanford Medicine also responded to us with a statement, saying that its gender clinic remains open and would provide care \u201cin compliance with federal laws and regulations.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n After reviewing \u201cthe latest actions and directives from the federal government,\u201d Stanford had \u201cpaused providing certain gender-related surgical procedures for patients under the age of 19, effective June 2.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe took this step to protect both our providers and patients,\u201d Stanford told us. \u201cThis was not a decision we made lightly, especially knowing how deeply this impacts the individuals and families who depend on our essential care and support.\u201d<\/p>\n Sutter responded to us on Dec. 10, the day that its own doctors had been led to believe all care might cease.<\/p>\n \u201cLike other health systems locally and across the country, we are working to ensure compliance with recent federal actions and other developments affecting the provision of gender-affirming care only for patients under 19,\u201d a spokesperson wrote. \u201cSutter-aligned physicians are engaging directly with their patients to have open and thoughtful conversations and to determine individual care plans that will meet anticipated requirements. Gender-affirming surgeries for patients under 19 had previously ceased.\u201d<\/p>\n UCSF\u2019s press officer did not respond to multiple queries over several days, though the website of its adolescent clinic<\/a> says it offers hormone medications, but not gender-affirming surgeries, to young people.\u00a0<\/p>\n The federal Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a query either.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re complying in advance,\u201d Allison said of the proposed HHS rule. \u201cAnd complying in advance with it is just completely cruel.\u201d<\/p>\n Allison and other parents I spoke with said they knew it wasn\u2019t the doctors driving this change; that they have been put in a terrible position along with their patients. \u201cI want to make really clear that the caregivers are heroic,\u201d Johnson told me. \u201cWe know they\u2019re fighting for us right now. Our goal is to support them and to support the executives to make the right decision.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the \u201cpauses\u201d in care can feel for many kids like pauses in life.<\/p>\n Eric told me about a friend who got surgery through Kaiser just weeks before surgeries got paused there last summer. It\u2019s something he\u2019d imagined for himself in the future, maybe, he said, when he turned 16 and a half. \u201cI thought the battle was going to be convincing my parents,\u201d he said. \u201cWe all got so angry when we realized we didn\u2019t even get to have that argument in our family. We didn\u2019t even get to choose.\u201d<\/p>\n Frustration with California attorney general Rob Bonta<\/p>\n Rob Bonta, California\u2019s attorney general, has fought openly against the federal government\u2019s attack on trans rights. Starting in October, he filed a series of amicus briefs<\/a> supporting lawsuits challenging federal subpoenas issued to gender clinics in Boston, Philadelphia and Colorado.\u00a0<\/p>\n In November, he released guidance<\/a> to medical providers that flouted Trump\u2019s executive orders. \u201cIn California, you have the right to receive medically necessary gender-affirming care,\u201d the statement read, \u201cwithout discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n And Thursday, after the HHS draft rules were announced, his office swiftly pushed back<\/a>, calling them cruel and unlawful. \u201cIt\u2019s important to note these proposals are far from final,\u201d Bonta said. \u201cWe stand ready to use every tool in our toolbox to prevent them from ever going into effect. Despite these proposals, medically necessary gender-affirming care remains protected by California law.\u201d<\/p>\n But as Stanford, Kaiser, Sutter and other systems in the state have preemptively halted surgical care for trans \u2014 but not cisgender \u2014 youth, Bonta has so far declined to enforce the state\u2019s anti-discrimination laws.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a source of great frustration,\u201d Johnson, the parent who helped found Rainbow Families Action, told me. \u201cThe law has been broken, wildly in the open, denying care to our kids. These are illegal actions in the state of California. This is the part that baffles us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n When I reached out to the AG\u2019s office to ask why, a spokesperson said only this: \u201cThe Trump Administration is threatening criminal charges and the jailing of doctors, as well as funding threats on hospitals that would place gender-affirming care nationwide at risk. We are focusing on removing these unlawful threats and root causes so that these providers can provide gender-affirming care.\u201d<\/p>\n Bonta will battle Trump, in other words, but not California\u2019s hospitals.<\/p>\n His hand may soon be forced. BP told me yesterday that Rainbow Families Action may file a civil rights complaint with the Department of Managed Healthcare, which oversees health equity in California. And they have spun up a legal committee to pursue \u201cother legal avenues.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n BP said she and other parents in Rainbow Families Action held a watch party of sorts yesterday as Kennedy; his head of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Mehmet Oz; and other officials claimed parents like them had been railroaded by \u201cgender ideology\u201d and announced a barrage of actions, including stripping \u201cgender dysphoria\u201d from legal definitions of disability and denying Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement to any hospital system that offers gender-affirming care to minors.<\/p>\n An hour after the press conference ended, I called BP, who sounded defiant.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re actively campaigning with all of our health care providers to make clear there is no need to proactively pause,\u201d she said, explaining that rulemaking is a process that takes months. Oz confirmed at the press conference<\/a> that the proposed Medicaid and Medicare rules would undergo a 60- to 90-day comment period, followed by the incorporation of that feedback, before a final rule would be issued.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will flood the public comments,\u201d BP told me. \u201cWe\u2019ll be in touch with state legislators, where we have a lot of allies, and hopefully with the attorney general\u2019s office. Despite what they may have said in that press conference, the doctors are on our side, the science is on our side, and, you know what? The moral justice is on our side.\u201d<\/p>\n The ACLU, like Bonta\u2019s office, has already threatened to sue<\/a>. When I reached out to Lawrence Gostin, a distinguished university professor at Georgetown Law and an expert on health law, he noted that the federal Administrative Procedure Act means the government \u201ccan\u2019t act arbitrarily.\u201d And over the years, courts have interpreted the act\u2019s prohibition on \u201carbitrary and capricious\u201d rule-making expansively, to include, as one academic wrote<\/a>, \u201cpoor analysis pushing an ideological agenda without regard to the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n Navigating Bay Area gender care options now<\/p>\n Meanwhile, local parents continue to look out for their kids, who are worried, as BP\u2019s son Eric said, that they\u2019re going to have to keep putting their lives on hold.<\/p>\n Again and again, East Bay parents said, they\u2019re trying to reassure their kids that no matter what, they\u2019re going to be okay; that, in Allison\u2019s words, \u201cI\u2019ll do whatever I can to make sure you have what you need.\u201d The struggle, she said, is how to find new care options, \u201cbecause doctors who offer this care are afraid to advertise that they offer this care.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like seeking a back-alley abortion,\u201d she said, \u201clike, \u2018I know a person who can help you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Knight Ball is a community advocate at Our Space<\/a>, a community center in Hayward that serves hundreds of queer and trans youth across Alameda County. \u201cGender affirming care historically has been difficult to access,\u201d they said. \u201cAccess can fluctuate. Some agencies that were offering care are no longer. We\u2019re trying to be as adaptive as possible. We have had some numbers go dead, some websites go dead.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But Ball said case managers there can help kids and their families navigate the changing care environment, as can those at the Oakland LGBTQ Community Center<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n For now, Ball said, they continue to recommend Planned Parenthood<\/a> clinics, La Clinica\u2019<\/a>s network, and Dream Youth Clinic<\/a>, all of which have locations in the East Bay, and case managers stand ready to sort out what will work for each young person\u2019s insurance coverage and means.<\/p>\n For some kids, the rise in hate-filled rhetoric has made them retreat. When Nikki\u2019s son first came out at age 7, she said, \u201che was vocal about it because it felt safe. Now he does a lot more to pass and fall under the radar.\u201d Storm suspects that the care cuts are particularly devastating to young people because they were born into this access and didn\u2019t realize how fragile it was.\u00a0<\/p>\n And when kids don\u2019t feel safe being out as trans, it can be tricky for their parents to engage in public advocacy, Johnson told me. \u201cWe\u2019re very fortunate in the Bay Area,\u201d he said, \u201cwhere some of us are part of supportive communities, we have trans parents who are not afraid to say who they are, and so we have been able to move into the public sphere in a way that not many families can.\u201d The hope, he said, is to keep California a sanctuary state for trans youth.<\/p>\n Just a few weeks ago, Rainbow Families Action formed a youth group, something so new it doesn\u2019t yet have a name. Eric was one of the first to join. \u201cThere are a lot of kids,\u201d he said, \u201cinterested in trying to secure their own future.\u201d<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last August, an Oakland high school student named Eric began gender-affirming care, at Kaiser Permanente. He\u2019d never thought…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[12,97,252,253,18287,3026],"class_list":["post-364626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-donald-trump","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-home-highlight","tag-lgbtq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/large-RFA_Sutter_Rally_BartNagel-1793.jpg\")
Calder Storm, whose daughter receives care at Stanford Health Care, at the Sutter protest on Dec. 8. Courtesy: Rainbow Families Action<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/large-RFA_Sutter_Rally_BartNagel-8572.jpg\")
A youth member of Rainbow Families Action at the Dec. 8 protest. Courtesy: Rainbow Families Action<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/RFA_Sutter_Rally_BartNagel-1577-1600x1067.jpg\")
Arne Johnson, one of the early members of Rainbow Families, and one of the founders of Rainbow Families Action, its activist arm. Credit: Courtesy of Rainbow Families Action<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Trans-Day-of-Visibility-March-to-Gavin-Newsoms-House-2025-03-31-6-of-45-1600x1088.jpeg\"){kind=spacer}
One of Rainbow Families Action\u2019s earliest protests was a march to Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s home on March 31, a few weeks after he called it \u201cdeeply unfair\u201d for trans girls to compete on girls teams. Credit: Gabriel David Barkin<\/p>\n