The Colorado Supreme Court effectively ordered Children’s Hospital Colorado on Monday to restart gender-affirming care for transgender kids.
The hospital had paused offering puberty blockers and hormonal treatment for gender-affirming purposes in January, following a threat from the Trump administration to cut federal funding to facilities that offer that care to minors. Children’s hospitals rely heavily on the joint federal-state Medicaid program.
Denver Health also suspended youth gender-affirming care at the same time, but isn’t facing a lawsuit.
Families of four transgender children sued. They alleged Children’s had discriminated on the basis of gender identity, because it still offered the same treatments to cisgender children with other conditions, such as an unusually early start to puberty.
Denver District Court Judge Ericka Eckhart opted not to require Children’s to restart care, finding that the potential harms to the hospital and its other patients from losing federal funding would outweigh harm to the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court, which heard arguments in the case in April, determined that the original court erred by allowing discrimination against one group because of potential harm to a larger group.
The order sent the case back to the original court, but with direction to issue an injunction preventing the hospital from halting gender-affirming care. Five of the Supreme Court justices agreed with the ruling, with Justice William Hood III writing for the majority. Justices Brian Boatwright and Carlos Samour Jr. dissented.
A spokeswoman for Children’s Hospital Colorado said the hospital was examining the ruling on Monday morning and couldn’t yet comment.
In December, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a declaration that gender-affirming care was neither safe nor effective, and that the department could seek to end federal funding for hospitals offering it to children. Colorado and 18 other Democratic-led states sued, pausing enforcement of Kennedy’s declaration.
Major medical groups generally support gender-affirming care for children with ongoing gender dysphoria – distress caused by the difference between a person’s internal sense of gender and the way the world sees them.
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