40 hospital systems stopped pediatric gender care since January 2025, AG says
NYU Langone Health and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center agreed in Justice Department settlements announced Friday to cease providing medical and surgical gender treatments for minors, according to the department. NYU will pay $8.5 million and UPMC will pay $950,000. The legal agreements have not been made public.
The settlements formalize the systems’ earlier decisions to halt the care in the face of regulatory pressure since President Trump returned to office and add financial penalties. A Justice Department spokeswoman said the agreements “legally bind them not to restart for years to come.”
An NYU spokesman said the agreement removed the threat that NYU would have had to provide confidential information about patients under 18 who received gender care. NYU said in February it had ended its Transgender Youth Health Program for reasons including the “current regulatory environment.”
A spokeswoman for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said the agreement protects patient privacy and “resolves a matter principally involving certain alleged gender-affirming care billing practices.” The settlement also provides nonprosecution protections for patients, legal guardians, providers and employees, the spokeswoman said. Last year, UPMC had said it had “become abundantly clear that our clinicians can no longer provide certain types of gender-affirming care without risk of criminal prosecution.”
Both NYU and UPMC had previously received subpoenas for patient information and have denied wrongdoing.
The settlements are part of a broader Justice Department effort. Attorney General Todd Blanche said Friday that since January 2025, 40 hospital systems have stopped providing gender treatments for minors. Major medical institutions, including in blue states, have stopped providing the care since Trump took office, making the care harder to obtain, the department said.
Other institutions that have settled include New York’s Mount Sinai Health System and the Cleveland Clinic. Last year, the Justice Department said it had sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics as part of what it described as a wide-ranging investigation into pediatric gender care.
The department has said it is examining possible violations of federal healthcare laws, including the use of false diagnosis codes to obtain payment from insurers and federal healthcare programs. Hospitals and patients have successfully challenged a number of the subpoenas; several judges have found the government was motivated by a political agenda rather than reasonable suspicion that the healthcare providers engaged in wrongdoing.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump ran heavily on an anti-transgender platform during his 2024 re-election campaign, and his administration has made ending gender care for minors a priority. Shortly after his inauguration, he issued an order seeking to “prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures” and calling for Justice Department investigations.