New York attorney general orders NYU Langone to restore trans youth care program

New York’s Democratic attorney general has directed NYU Langone Health to immediately reopen its Transgender Youth Health Program, ruling that the hospital’s decision to suspend gender-affirming care for minors violates state anti-discrimination protections.

NYU Langone, a major hospital system in Manhattan, shut down its Transgender Youth Health Program on 17 February, citing “the current regulatory environment” amid escalating threats from the Trump administration to cut federal funding to providers of gender-affirming care for minors. The program had offered a full spectrum of services to trans adolescents, including counseling and mental health support, puberty blockers, hormone therapy and, in some cases, surgery.

In a 25 February letter obtained by The New York Times, Darsana Srinivasan, who leads the New York attorney general’s health care bureau, warned NYU Langone that the closure likely breaches New York state laws that prohibit discrimination based on a patient’s membership in a protected class, including gender identity.

“New York state laws prohibit discrimination based on a patient’s membership in a protected class,” Srinivasan wrote, concluding that excluding transgender youth from services and medications otherwise available to other patients appears unlawful. The attorney general’s office said it had received numerous complaints from families whose children were patients in the now‑shuttered program and had been informed their care would end in February.

The letter formally instructed the hospital to restore its services for trans youth: “You are hereby advised to immediately resume all service offerings as they had before the change in policy and to make medically necessary puberty-blocking medications and hormone therapies available for patients under 19 who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria.” NYU Langone was given 10 days to report on its compliance; that deadline falls on Saturday. The hospital has not publicly confirmed whether it will reinstate the program.

The dispute comes against a backdrop of sustained federal hostility toward gender-affirming care for minors from the Trump administration. Over the past year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the federal government would withhold Medicare and Medicaid funding from hospitals providing such care to trans youth. The Justice Department has subpoenaed doctors and clinics, the Federal Trade Commission has opened investigations into gender-affirming care providers, and the FBI has promoted a tip line framed as targeting those who “mutilate” children “under the guise of gender-affirming care.” These measures follow a series of executive orders by President Trump attacking “gender ideology” and condemning trans healthcare as “child mutilation.”

In response to these threats, dozens of hospitals nationwide have preemptively shut down or scaled back their youth gender programs, while some institutions in states with strong civil rights safeguards have faced countervailing pressure to maintain services. NYU Langone’s decision to close its Transgender Youth Health Program was taken before the administration’s funding threats were actually enforced, the attorney general’s office noted.

“NYU Langone’s change in policy is self‑imposed,” the letter states. “There has been no change in federal law to require the cessation of medically necessary transgender health care.”

Attorney General Letitia James had already warned hospitals across New York in February of last year that state law obliges them to maintain non-discriminatory access to care, regardless of shifting federal politics or funding threats. “Regardless of the availability of federal funding, we write to further remind you of your obligation to comply with New York state laws,” she said at the time.