Portside

Less than 48 hours after NYU ­Langone canceled gender-affirming care appointments for two trans children, over one thousand protesters, including doctors, parents, students and teachers, showed up at the Upper East Side hospital for an action organized by the Democratic Socialists of America.

Five days later, several thousand people gathered in Union Square for a “Rise Up for Trans Youth” rally organized by Transformative Schools, Act Up NY and the Gender Liberation Movement. 

Attorney General Letitia James sent a letter reminding health care providers of their obligation to comply with state anti-discrimination laws, “regardless of the availability of federal funding.” 

The letter references a Jan. 28 executive order deceitfully titled Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, which threatens to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to people under age 19. 

However, due to a temporary restraining order blocking the freeze of federal funds, “funding to institutions that provide gender-affirming care continues to be available, irrespective of President Trump’s recent Executive Order,” according to an amicus brief filed on Feb. 21 by 18 attorneys general, including James.

The executive order “rescinds funding only where the gender-affirming care is offered to an individual whose ‘identity … differs from his or her sex.’ People who are cisgender remain free to receive the exact same treatments, including to better ‘align [their] physical appearance’ with their gender identity,” the brief states. 

Gender-affirming care includes providing puberty blockers, hormones and, in rare instances, surgery — most commonly breast reductions. A 2024 Harvard study found “little to no utilization of gender-affirming surgeries by transgender and gender-diverse” minors in the United States.

“Withholding the availability of services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity or their diagnosis of gender dysphoria, while offering such services to cisgender individuals, is discrimination under New York law,” James writes in her letter.

Delaying or suspending gender-affirming care can be dangerous. “Adolescents who begin gender-affirming treatment at later stages of puberty are five times more likely to be diagnosed with depression and four times more likely to have anxiety disorders than adolescents who seek treatment in early puberty,” according to a 2020 study by the American Academy of ­Pediatrics (AAP). Odds of “severe psychological distress [were reduced] by 222%, 153% and 81% for those who began hormones in early adolescence, late adolescence and adulthood, respectively,” a 2022 Stanford study found. 

AAP’s gender-affirming care model states that “variations in gender identity and expression are normal aspects of human diversity … If a mental health issue exists, it most often stems from stigma and negative experiences rather than being intrinsic to the child.” 

Following Trump’s inauguration, The Trevor Project saw a 46% rise in demand for its crisis counseling services, and a 700% overall increase since the election. Purporting to “End Reliance on Junk Science,” the Jan. 28 executive order dismisses research by the AAP and numerous other leading medical associations supporting gender-affirming care. 

“Expanding support and offering the very best care for our LGBTQ+ patients and families has remained a top priority,” said Michelle Lloyd, vice president of children’s services at the Sala Institute for Child and Family Centered Care, in a 2022 press release by NYU Langone. The press release’s title advertised NYU Langone as a 10-time “National LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Leader,” recognized by the Human Rights Campaign. 

The press release is posted on the Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital Transgender Youth Health Program website, above a different link to an article titled “CBS News: Gender-Affirming Care Is Lifesaving Care.” 

“Hospital CEOs know just as we all do that this decision [to suspend care] is not based on what’s best for patients,” remarked Daniel Goulden, a Brooklyn teacher and organizer who spoke during a Feb. 18 mass call for trans rights organized by the New York DSA. 

“Everyone who is on this call and feeling really freaked out … I feel you … but we have literally thousands of people standing with us … if we mobilize that power, and if we concentrate it strategically, we can win,” Goulden continued.

Since the Feb. 3 protest, volunteers have sent approximately 100,000 letters to board members, trustees and executive leadership at NYU ­Langone, Mount Sinai and New York Presbyterian hospitals, Goulden shared. The letters urged hospitals to immediately resume gender-affirming care for minors, and reminded that executive orders “do not have the authority to override the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes and established legal precedent.”

“We expect [providers] to go to the Supreme Court … first, before violating our laws and values, before throwing children out of care that they deserve and need,” said Michael Kinnucan, senior health policy advisor at the Fiscal Policy Institute, who also spoke on the call. 

State Senator Kristen Gonzalez (D-Queens/Brooklyn/Manhattan) explained the letter writing as part of an “inside-outside” organizing strategy. While activists use protests to build public awareness about anti-trans discrimination, letters, including a letter sent by Gonzalez and ­Assemblymember Harvey Epstein to NYU Langone on Feb. 6, can apply pressure to members inside organizations. 

The statements remind private hospitals that “they do not have the support of elected officials, [and] they do not have the support of the community,” Gonzalez said. The letter requested a meeting with NYU Langone and a response by Feb. 17. As The Indypendent goes to press on March 13, NYU Langone has not responded to the letter.

Private hospitals rely on what Kinnocan deems an “unholy alliance of public money and private power in the U.S. healthcare system.” Hospitals with nonprofit status, like NYU, are required to report their charitable spending to the IRS. (For more, see sidebar.)

Medicaid plus property and sales tax exemptions are just some of the ways New York State funds private hospitals. Private hospitals rely on students trained at public hospitals as well as members of nurses and doctors unions. NYU Langone has been “accused of literally sending people out of its ER and down the street,” Kinnucan stated, referencing a 2022 New York Times article. “That’s a subsidy we [the public] are giving it. We’re caring where it doesn’t wanna care.”

Leveraging these pressure points will require a sustained, strategic response. “The federal government is asking a question of New Yorkers: Who are we willing to give up? And our answer is no one,” said mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on the call. 

Hospitals “depend on our tax dollars, our insurance premiums, our labor as caregivers,” Kinnucan states. “Who are they accountable to?” 

Ken Langone, Home Depot co-founder with a $9.7 billion net worth, donated $200 million to NYU Medical Center in 2008 in an unrestricted gift. Langone donated another $200 million to provide full-tuition scholarships for students at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in 2018 — the same year he released his memoir, I Love Capitalism! Despite donating to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Take Back the House 2020 PAC and republican super-PAC Senate Leadership Fund, Langone reported feeling “betrayed” by Trump after the January 6th attacks.

Listeners on the DSA call commented that providers at Callen-Lorde and Planned Parenthood advised saving up extra hormones in the wake of Trump’s executive orders in the event of possible supply disruptions. These claims have not been verified by providers. 

On March 3, New York Health + Hospitals Press secretary Stephanie Buhle confirmed in an email to The Indypendent that “We continue to provide gender-affirming care, including to patients under 19.”

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