{"id":393560,"date":"2026-01-07T18:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T18:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/393560\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T18:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T18:07:10","slug":"childrens-hospitals-face-hhs-probe-over-gender-affirming-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/393560\/","title":{"rendered":"Children’s hospitals face HHS probe over gender-affirming care"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> <\/p>\n

Published<\/p>\n

2026-01-07 09:39<\/p>\n

9:39<\/p>\n

January 7, 2026<\/p>\n

am<\/p>\n

America\/Chicago<\/p>\n

Three children\u2019s hospitals are under federal investigation for providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth, as the Trump administration continues to use all the levers it can to block such care.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Health and Human Services (HHS) General Counsel Mike Stuart has referred three children\u2019s hospitals to the agency\u2019s inspector general\u2019s office: Seattle Children\u2019s Hospital, Children\u2019s Hospital Colorado, and Children\u2019s Minnesota. Gender-affirming care for trans youth is legal in all three states. But HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month announced<\/a> that medical practitioners who provide gender-affirming care to minors are out of compliance with federal health care standards. Now, the agency is enforcing that declaration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In response, Children\u2019s Hospital Colorado has reportedly<\/a> paused gender-affirming care for trans youth. Children\u2019s Minnesota did not respond to a request for comment, and its website<\/a> states that \u201cat this time, our gender health services remain unchanged.\u201d Seattle Children\u2019s hospital also did not respond.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another hospital, Denver Health<\/a>, has also paused gender-affirming care for trans youth since Kennedy\u2019s declaration, although the hospital does not appear to be under investigation.<\/p>\n

In earlier efforts by Trump administration officials to investigate and halt\u00a0 gender-affirming care, both Children\u2019s Hospital Colorado<\/a> and Seattle Children\u2019s Hospital<\/a> successfully fought back against Justice Department subpoenas seeking trans patients\u2019 medical information.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The administration previously pressured<\/a> hospitals to halt gender-affirming care by threatening to revoke federal funding, which worked<\/a> in many cases, but these HHS investigations mark a new escalation. They stem from Kennedy saying that, under his authority as health secretary, he can unilaterally decide that gender-affirming care \u2014 which\u00a0 he calls \u201csex-rejecting procedures\u201d \u2014 is not a safe and effective treatment for trans youth.<\/p>\n

The response from states has been swift. Just before Christmas, 19 states \u2014\u00a0including Washington state, Colorado, and Minnesota\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and Washington, D.C., sued<\/a> Kennedy and the federal health agency over the announcement. The states\u2019 lawsuit<\/a> says the declaration harms their ability to administer state Medicaid plans in accordance with local laws protecting gender-affirming care.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, the declaration is the extremely clear way they are trying to just shut down this care all across the country,\u201d said Katie Keith, director of the center for health policy and the law at the O\u2019Neill Institute at Georgetown Law. \u201cThey are trying to ban it nationwide for minors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

On X<\/a>, Stuart said that all three hospitals were referred<\/a> to the agency\u2019s inspector general\u2019s office for failing to meet \u201crecognized standards of health care,\u201d citing Kennedy\u2019s declaration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The HHS has also proposed two new rules<\/a> to restrict gender-affirming care for trans youth \u2014\u00a0both of which must still go through an approval process before they can be enforced. One rule would block hospitals from receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds if they provide gender-affirming care to trans youth. That care includes hormone replacement therapy<\/a> for adolescents and puberty blockers<\/a> for young kids who are experiencing dysphoria \u2014\u00a0intense discomfort or anxiety felt when someone\u2019s physical gender is out of sync with their identity. It also includes surgery, which is very rarely performed on minors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another proposed rule would bar Medicaid from covering gender-affirming care for youth under 18 and the Children\u2019s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) from covering such care for youth under 19. This would disproportionately impact low-income trans youth. Technically, states could still use their own funds for coverage \u2014\u00a0but experts say that would be extremely burdensome and ultimately cause gaps in care.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians and other specialists, strongly condemned these proposals, saying that they misrepresent current medical consensus and create uncertainty for patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThese rules are a baseless intrusion into the patient-physician relationship,\u201d the group said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cPatients, their families, and their physicians \u2014 not politicians or government officials \u2014 should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them.\u201dThe American Civil Liberties Union has said it will challenge<\/a> these two restrictions in court if they are finalized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published 2026-01-07 09:39 9:39 January 7, 2026 am America\/Chicago Three children\u2019s hospitals are under federal investigation for providing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":{"0":"post-393560","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393560","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=393560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}