Plaintiffs Claim CMS Violates Injunction, Threatens Hospital Funding Over LGBTQ Care

The federal government’s assault on LGBTQ people and their access to healthcare services continued this week as the Trump administration ignores an injunction, the Supreme Court accepts a case on conversion therapy and researchers sue over the removal of articles from a government website.

Beginning on day one of his second term, President Donald Trump began to issue a huge number of executive orders directly addressing the healthcare needs of LGBTQ people. KFF has a full accounting of the EOs issued thus far, which include ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government, blocking access to gender affirming care for minors and defining sex as “an immutable binary biological classification” and removing sex protections from agencies.

LGBTQ advocacy groups are raising alarms that the Trump administration is in violation of an injunction against an executive order that threatens gender affirming care for minors. According to Reuters, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a memo to healthcare providers last week saying that it “may consider” terminating federal grants should they provide gender transition treatments to minors, including puberty blockers. The memo was filed the day after U.S. District Judge Brendan Hurson in Maryland blocked the administration from cutting funding for EO enforcement.

Two physicians at Harvard Medical School are suing the Trump administration for removing two research papers from the Patient Safety Network (PSNet), which is run by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The researchers argue that the removal amounts to a violation of freedom of speech as they were taken down for including the terms “LGBTQ” and “trans(gender)”, STAT News reports.

LGBTQ people are at greater risk of dying from a number of health-related issues, and just last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) called for more research on addressing the health needs of this population. Harvard Medical School researchers and affiliated hospitals published three studies on the drivers of the disparities, including suggested avenues for equity.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case that challenges Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors after previously turning down opportunities to weigh in on state-level policies. The challenge to the Colorado law comes from a Christian counselor represented by the Scottsdale-based activist group, Alliance Defending Freedom which argues that the ban constitutes an infringement of the counselor’s freedom of speech. According to Inside Health Policy, the case will be heard in the court’s next term.