Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) on Tuesday denounced a recent decision by the University of Michigan’s hospital system to suspend gender-affirming care for transgender youth, calling the move “cowardly” and possibly “illegal.”
Michigan Medicine said Monday it would no longer offer gender-affirming care to patients younger than 19, in line with a January executive order from President Trump. The health care provider said it would continue serving transgender youth through “all appropriate care other than puberty blockers and gender affirming hormones.”
A statement from the university’s public affairs department said Michigan Medicine was one of several institutions to have received a subpoena from the Justice Department as part of the federal government’s investigation into gender-affirming care for minors. The department announced in July it sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics “involved in performing transgender medical procedures on children” in investigations of “healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.”
A federal subpoena sent in June to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and made public in a court filing last week demanded confidential patient information and “every writing or record of whatever type” from doctors providing transition-related care to patients younger than 19. The request asks for information dating back to January 2020, more than a year before gender-affirming care was banned anywhere in the U.S.
In a statement Tuesday, Nessel said Michigan Medicine halting its prescription of puberty blockers and hormones to transgender youth is a “cowardly acquiescence to political pressure.”
“The announcement from the University of Michigan that they will no longer provide their transgender patients with all of the healthcare options available is shameful, dangerous, and potentially illegal,” she said, adding that her department would be “considering all of our options” in determining whether the hospital’s decision to suspend care violates the state’s laws.
“This administration draws most of its power from the willingness of its targets to capitulate without a fight, abandoning their own principles and interests, and throwing disfavored populations under the bus,” Nessel said. “Despite repeated successful legal challenges to actions by this administration, UM has chosen instead to sacrifice the health, well-being, and likely the very lives of Michigan children, to protect itself from the ire of an administration who, oftentimes, engages in unlawful actions itself.”
Michigan Medicine did not immediately return a request for comment.
Nessel and more than a dozen Democratic attorneys general sued the Trump administration earlier this month over his Jan. 28 executive order, which aims to end federal support for gender-affirming care for anyone younger than 19, and the Justice Department’s subpoenas and investigations into hospitals.
The lawsuit, which names Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department as defendants, says the administration “has taken aggressive action” to implement Trump’s directive, none of which has “any legal basis.”
A federal judge blocked parts of Trump’s order in February, ruling that a group of transgender teenagers and LGBTQ organizations were likely to succeed in arguing that the order, along with another prohibiting the federal government from promoting “gender ideology,” is without authority and amounts to illegal and unconstitutional discrimination.
In an open letter addressed Tuesday to Michigan health care providers and patients, Nessel wrote that “the availability of federal funding has no bearing on Michiganders’ right to seek healthcare services without discrimination.”
“Moreover, access to federal funds does not relieve Michigan healthcare facilities and providers of the obligation to comply with Michigan laws, including those that prohibit discrimination against individuals based on their membership in a protected class, such as disability, religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or marital status,” she wrote.
“Refusing healthcare services to a class of individuals based on their protected status, such as 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, may constitute discrimination under Michigan law,” Nessel continued. “I strongly encourage individuals seeking healthcare services, as well as healthcare facilities and providers, to consult with legal counsel to understand their rights and obligations under Michigan law and the impacts of federal litigation challenging the federal government’s efforts to block funding and limit healthcare access.”
