From legal to murder threats, advocates of transgender treatment for kids counter Trump policies

When the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee's ban on so-called gender-affirming care for minors, it rejected a legal argument that prohibiting puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries as treatment for gender confusion but not other conditions was discriminatory.

That failed argument appears to have popped up in a vague threat letter by the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James to a Manhattan hospital that stopped providing medicalized gender transitions for kids in light of personnel and federal policy changes.

It's not the first time James has claimed that cutting off treatment could violate state anti-discrimination law. 

She put New York hospitals on notice after New York University's Langone Health last month stopped treatment, following President Trump's year-ago executive order against "chemical and surgical mutilation" of kids and his vow to strip federal funding from providers that treat transgender youth.

“New York state laws prohibit discrimination based on a patient’s membership in a protected class, including sex, gender identity, and disability, and remain in full effect," Health Care Bureau Chief Darsana Srinivasan told NYU Langone Executive Vice President Annette Johnson, Spectrum News NY1 reported, recycling the argument rejected by SCOTUS.

The high court's 6-3 ruling last summer in favor of Tennessee explicitly refused to designate transgender status as a protected class or even recognize the law as a sex-based classification, saying it classifies based only on age and "medical use," such as by allowing treatment for "precocious puberty" but not gender confusion.

DOJ's ill-intent is a 'stench'

James is unofficially leading the vanguard against Trump administration efforts to stop medicalized gender transitions for youth by threatening federal funding for hospitals that continue the procedures and investigating them for allegedly deceiving consumers in how the procedures are marketed.

She's joined by a President Obama-nominated judge who has twice blocked Justice Department subpoenas for University of Pittsburgh Medical Center minor patient records as part of its nationwide investigation into fraudulent billing by gender clinics.

U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon used loaded language to reject DOJ's narrowed request for anonymized patient records, claiming its "rhetoric regarding gender-­affirming care reflects callous indifference, if not abject cruelty," TribLive reported. (Her first rejection noted DOJ said the "barbaric" treatment "exploit[s] and mutilate[s]" children.)

The chief judge of the Western District of Pennsylvania said DOJ's "ill-intent" was "arguably … closer to a stench" and claimed "true and effective anonymization" of minor patient records was impossible. She implied it could not be trusted to observe "historical norms, standards and frankly, decency" in protecting sensitive health information.

DOJ had appealed Bissoon's first rejection to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before her second, according to TribLive.

An alleged administrator at the University of California system's health sciences campus even went outside the law to discourage parents from speaking against hormonal and surgical interventions, threatening to stalk and kill one of them.

UC San Francisco Clinical and Translational Science Training Administrative Director Madeline Mann was widely identified as the counterprotester caught on camera whispering a mortal threat in the ear of gender-critical activist Beth Bourne as the latter questioned Mann at the Democratic Party convention in the city.

Reportedly there to organize a transgender rights march, Mann initiated the encounter by calling Bourne a "TERF," a slur that means trans-exclusionary radical feminist, prompting her to approach Mann's group and ask a series of questions about youth gender confusion and treatment thresholds before Mann walks away from the "hatred."

"It's not hatred to tell a child that they can grow up to be healthy and whole," Bourne says while recording herself and Mann, who is silently holding a pro-transgender sign. "How much money does a surgeon make off of giving a girl top surgery [breast removal]?"

Referring to her sting operation against Kaiser Permanente, Bourne said she was "approved for a phalloplasty in two appointments over Zoom."

She asked whether Mann would let her "transgender child" – reportedly a girl who identifies as a boy – have top surgery and a $130,000 "fake penis" made from the girl's arm tissue, at which point Mann said, "I'm gonna hunt you down and f—ing kill you."

Bourne filed a police report against Mann but discounted what it would accomplish, identifying the officer who interviewed her as LGBTQ liaison Kathryn Winters, whom the San Francisco Police Department calls an "out trans woman" – a male who identifies as a woman.

UCSF has not answered Just the News queries all week for Mann's status but took down her UCSF profile on Monday, according to The College Fix. Mann's email returned an auto-reply saying it's "currently not monitored" and directing queries to Director of Program Administration Molly Belinski, who did not respond either.

Ordered to reinstate 'medically necessary' treatment, undefined

James's office has yet to acknowledge its Feb. 25 letter to NYU Langone or answer queries by Just the News, which pieced together its contents from media that claimed to have seen it but didn't post it, as did NYU's own Washington Square News.

“NYU Langone appears to be suddenly and indefinitely canceling transgender children’s future appointments thereby jeopardizing access to medically necessary health care for some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers," Srinivasan told Johnson, according to Gothamist.

Srinivasan claimed "there has been no change in federal law to require the cessation of medically necessary transgender health care," apparently alluding to binding regulations in the works by the Department of Health and Human Services based on Trump's order.

The letter's reported contents don't specify what makes the treatment "medically necessary," but HHS's announcement about proposed regulations said the "sex-rejecting procedures" expose kids to "infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density, altered brain development, and other irreversible physiological effects."

Days earlier, more than 70 New York elected officials urged NYU Langone to reinstate treatment, claiming disruptions to the "essential healthcare" are associated with "higher rates of depression and increased attempts at self harm" but giving no source. 

An ACLU lawyer conceded in a Supreme Court argument there's no evidence treatment reduces completed suicide, and a Children's Hospital Los Angeles researcher admitted in 2024 to never publishing her 2015 taxpayer-funded study on puberty blockers for gender confusion because it didn't show any improvement in children's mental health.

Many gender clinics nationwide haven't waited for binding regulations before reversing course. CHLA, one of the largest, ditched its program shortly after the FBI reportedly opened an investigation into violations of a federal law against "female genital mutilation."

Seattle Children's Hospital, by contrast, is still advertising unspecified "gender-affirming medical care" months after HHS started investigating it and other providers. Seattle NPR station KUOW recently reported that MultiCare Health System's Mary Bridge Hospital in Tacoma was shuttering its youth gender clinic in advance of binding regulations.

NYU Langone is "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,” Srinivasan said, according to national lesbian magazine GO.

Failure to demonstrate compliance by March 11 "may result in further action by this office," Srinivasan said, without specifying further.