A federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order ending funding for medical institutions that provide puberty blockers and sex-change operations to minors, marking the second temporary restraining order against the administration’s plan to protect children from transgender procedures.
U.S. District Court Judge Lauren King of Washington issued the order more than two weeks after Trump signed the “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” directive, which tasks federal agencies with ensuring hospitals that receive research or education grants end gender transitions for people under age 19.
Friday’s order stems from a lawsuit filed by the Democratic attorneys general of Washington, Oregon, and Minnesota, along with three anonymous doctors who provide what progressive ideologues call “gender-affirming health care.”
The plaintiffs argued that Trump’s order violates the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantees to patients who identify as transgender. They also contended that the order unlawfully withholds funding already appropriated by Congress.
Judge King, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, placed Trump’s order on hold while the case plays out in court. She said Trump’s order likely won’t withstand “constitutional scrutiny.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department argues the Trump administration hasn’t moved to strip any federal funding and counters the order does not violate the law because it directed agencies to act in accordance with applicable law.
U.S. District Court Judge Brendan Hurson of Maryland, also a Biden-appointed judge, issued a similar restraining order on Thursday that lasts for 14 days. That case was brought by several transgender-identifying youth, along with parents and LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, who claimed they were unable to get the medical treatment they needed.
Under the executive order, the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for “improving the health of minors with gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion, or who otherwise seek chemical or surgical mutilation,” instead of encouraging children to undergo gender transition or hormone therapy to treat gender dysphoria.
The department is now headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has said he would reverse the Biden administration’s efforts to expand transgender procedures. Kennedy was confirmed as HHS secretary by the Senate on Thursday.
“Across the country today, medical professionals are 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,” Trump’s order states. “This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”
The move to withhold federal funding from medical institutions contingent on halting gender transitions is part of Trump’s sweeping crackdown on Democratic policies that enabled transgenderism and other left-wing ideologies to flourish within the executive branch. The president signed an order formally recognizing biological sex and eliminating gender-identity ideology from the government.
During his inaugural address, Trump said there were only two genders: male and female.