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New York Attorney General Letitia James is threatening a hospital in her own state with “further action” if it fails to disobey President Donald Trump’s executive order to end the “chemical and surgical mutilation” of children via sex-rejecting hormone drugs and surgeries.
“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,” instructed a reported February 25th letter from Darsana Srinivasan, who heads the attorney general’s health care bureau, to NYU Langone Health.
According to a report Monday at the New York Times, Srinivasan’s letter “raised the question of whether NYU Langone’s action violated New York’s anti-discrimination laws, by barring a single category of patients from receiving medications that others could access.”
“New York state laws prohibit discrimination based on a patient’s membership in a protected class,” Srinivasan reportedly wrote.
The letter apparently indicated James’ office had received complaints from patients who had been undergoing sex-rejecting medical treatments at NYU Langone prior to its announcement that it would be discontinuing its Transgender Youth Health Program due to “the recent departure of our medical director, coupled with the current regulatory environment.”
According to the Times, the hospital was told to contact James’ office within 10 days with notice of its compliance with state law, or else face “further action,” including the possibility of an investigation.
In Trump’s executive order, the president directed all federal departments and agencies to “immediately take appropriate steps to ensure that institutions receiving Federal research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”
Currently, the web page for the former NYU Langone transgender youth program takes visitors to a page titled “Gender & Sexuality Service” – a program that still clearly aligns with the so-called “gender-affirming care” model of treatment for gender dysphoria.
“Our service provides ongoing evidence-based psychotherapy and uses a gender-affirming stance to address a variety of mental health concerns that may impact individuals exploring their gender identity,” the hospital program states.
Despite its embrace of sex-rejecting treatments for children and teens, the hospital appears to be complying with the federal order for the sake of protecting its federal funding.
James has made clear since Trump’s first administration that she would make targeting and resisting him a central focus of her role as New York attorney general.
“I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president,” she said during a 2018 campaign video, claiming that “at the eye of the storm” of her perception of the nation’s problems, “is Donald Trump.”
In his column Wednesday about James’ threat to NYU Langone, law professor and legal analyst Jonathan Turley wrote the hospital is between “a rock and a hard place.”
“Effectively, James is ordering the hospital to defy the federal government,” Turley observed. “However, the hospital, not James or the state, would bear the financial and regulatory consequences.”
Even though the letter from James’ office does not spell out the form of “further action” the hospital could suffer if it decides to comply with Trump’s order, Turley believes it presents a formidable challenge.
“There is also the question of whether the HHS [Health and Human Services] has standing or interest in challenging the move as a direct threat to federal authority,” he added.
“The problem with a federal challenge is that nothing in the New York threat prevents the federal government from carrying out its intent to cut off funding,” Turley wrote. “Hospitals would have to choose between penalties in New York or loss of funding in Washington. Nevertheless, New York’s move is a direct attack on the enforcement of federal policy by state hospitals.”
Recently, a board-certified plastic surgeon who trained at NYU Langone publicly apologized for not speaking up about what he described as witnessing children as young as 13 years old undergo “irreversible” gender surgeries.
“As a father to three young children and as a physician who took an oath to do no harm, I failed to speak up, and I just want to thank President Trump for having moral clarity on this,” Dr. Ira Savetsky told Fox & Friends, stressing the pressure placed upon parents to accept their child’s gender change in order to avoid a suicide attempt.
“I can only imagine what the parents were going through,” he said. “I mean, they’re told that their child is going to kill themselves if they don’t have these surgeries.”
“They’re pressured, and what are you supposed to do?” Savetsky asked. “You’ve dropped everything to do the right thing for your child, and I think that, unfortunately, there was a lot of financial motivation with these institutions.”
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