21 States Sue HHS to Continue Harming ‘Transgender’-Identified Minors
The Department of Health and Human Services announced in August it would no longer allow federal funds to pay for children to receive damaging “transgender” medical procedures, including puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries.
Now, a coalition of 21 states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) challenging the ban.
The states want courts to overturn the ban, so medical professionals can continue to harm children with body-mutilating, damaging interventions.
CMS’ new rule prohibits Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) from funding any “sex-rejecting” medical procedures, including puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries.
The agency said the prohibition was “an administration priority consistent with its commitment to protect children from experimental and life-altering sex-rejecting procedures that carry serious long-term health risks and lack sufficiently reliable evidence of clinical benefit.”
The complaint argues that HHS and CMS do not have the authority to make these determinations about state Medicaid and CHIP programs:
Congress has vested the states with the authority to determine which services would be covered under their Medicaid and CHIP programs when made pursuant to individualized determinations of medical necessity.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and California Attorney General Rob Bonta co-led the lawsuit and filed the challenge in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Campbell denounced the HHS and CMS effort to protect children:
The Trump Administration’s latest attack on access to gender-affirming care for young people unlawfully undermines states’ authority to regulate healthcare and tries to strip healthcare access from vulnerable kids.
Bonta falsely called mutilating and sterilizing medical interventions for sexually confused children “crucial care,” adding:
We will continue to fight to secure access to medically necessary care and protect transgender individuals’ abilities to prosper as their authentic selves.
But “transgender” procedures that harm minors are not “healthcare,” nor are they “crucial” or “medically necessary.” Instead, they stop the normal process of puberty and damage healthy bodies, as CMS stated when the rule was released:
Sex-rejecting procedures on children, which include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical operations, can result in irreversible damage, including infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density, altered brain development, and other lasting physiological effects.
And calling someone’s “gender identity” their “authentic self” is a false ideology, with no scientific or medical basis.
Children who reject their sex and want to identify as the opposite sex need help and healing for their mental disorder, not “gender-affirming care.”
HHS released a comprehensive review in May 2025, Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria Review of Evidence and Best Practices. The 409-page report cited “growing international concern about pediatric medical transition.”
The medical review noted that “the diagnosis of gender dysphoria is based entirely on subjective self-reports and behavioral observations, without any objective physical, imaging, or laboratory markers,” adding that “systematic reviews of the evidence have revealed deep uncertainty about the purported benefits of these interventions.”
The lawsuit argues that the report’s conclusion “was predetermined by President Trump and HHS itself,” claiming that it “suffers from serious methodological problems.”
Three of the report’s critics – the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association and the Endocrine Society – were invited to review it, but only the APA deigned to do so.
HHS thoroughly refuted the APA’s criticisms, and even The Washington Post editorial board supported the conclusion, saying:
[The HHS report’s] core finding – that the evidence for [transgender medical] interventions is highly uncertain – echoes the results of systematic reviews in other countries. None of the peer reviews of the HHS report ultimately rebut that conclusion.
The complaint joins more than 1,750 lawsuits attempting to stymie Trump administration policies, including at least six that target “transgender” policies that protect children from harmful drugs, hormones and surgeries.
Twenty-seven states have “Help Not Harm” laws protecting minors from these body-mutilating procedures, while the issue is on the November 2026 ballot in Colorado and Missouri.
Campbell and Bonta were joined in the complaint by attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, along with the governor of Pennsylvania.
The case is Massachusetts, et al. v. HHS.
Related articles and resources:
18 States Sue HHS for Protecting Children From Sex-Rejecting Procedures
HHS Ceases Medicaid, CHIP Funding for Sex-Rejecting Procedures for Kids
HHS Finalizes Report Finding Sex-Rejecting Procedures Harm Minors
HHS Releases Report on Harms of ‘Transgender’ Medical Interventions for Minors
HHS Will Block Hospitals From Performing Sex-Rejecting, Mutilating Procedures on Children
President Trump Signs Order Protecting Children From Transgender Medical Interventions
Sixteen States Sue Trump Administration for Protecting Children from ‘Trans’ Procedures
