California AG Rob Bonta sues Trump administration over trans healthcare
California Attorney General Rob Bonta accused the Trump administration of illegally pressuring hospitals, clinics and universities to stop providing care for transgender youth in a lawsuit filed Friday with leaders of Democratic-led states.
“The President and his Administration’s relentless attacks on gender-affirming care endanger already vulnerable adolescents whose health and well-being are at risk,” Bonta said in a statement, referring to the surgical and other efforts a person can take if they don’t feel their gender aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth.
The lawsuit targets several actions taken by the administration, including an executive order President Donald Trump signed in January that claimed medical professionals were “maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.”
Children are defined as people who are under 19 years old.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has also threatened to “build cases against hospitals and practitioners violating federal or state laws banning female genital mutilation and other, related practices.”
In response, medical providers have announced they would stop providing gender-affirming care. That includes Kaiser Permanente, the Northern California health giant, which last month announced it was halting such surgeries for patients 18 and under. It planned to keep providing other related treatments.
The Trump administration touted that, and other announcements, in a recent news release titled: “President Trump Promised to End Child Sexual Mutilation — and He Delivered.”
Bonta, in his statement, countered: “The Trump Administration’s unlawful threats have not only undermined State rights but have directly contributed to diminishing access to gender-affirming care.” He was joined in the lawsuit by attorneys general in states including New York, Massachusetts and Illinois.
The case was filed in Massachusetts.
