The Trump administration has made the halting of irreversible and often debilitating "gender-affirming" treatments for minors a priority in healthcare policy. Adults can do as they please (and pay for it themselves), but children cannot; they cannot give fully informed consent.
Now, the Justice Department (DOJ) has managed to get these treatments halted at two more major healthcare facilities. A DOJ press release issued Friday has the details.
Today, the Department of Justice announced agreements with two of the nation’s largest health care systems—New York University Langone Hospitals (“NYU”) and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (“UPMC”)—that resolve investigations into potential violations of federal law arising from their provision of sex-rejecting procedures on children, often euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care.” Under the agreements, NYU and UPMC will cease providing these dangerous interventions to minors, which include administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and performing surgical procedures. Each hospital will also pay a monetary amount as part of the resolutions, with NYU agreeing to pay $8.5 million and UPMC $950,000.
“The Department of Justice is fighting to protect our nation’s children and working tirelessly to reach agreements with hospitals to end so-called ‘gender affirming care’ for minors,” said Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Today’s resolutions send a clear message: hospitals that target children in these practices and then fraudulently obtain payment for the procedures will be held to account.”
This isn't the first such settlement, and it won't be the last.
Today’s announcement follows similar agreements with Mount Sinai Health System in New York, Texas Children’s Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Connecticut Children’s Hospital. In working towards these resolutions, the United States acknowledged that both NYU and UPMC took significant steps entitling them to credit for cooperation with the Department in its investigation, including ongoing cooperation in the Department’s investigation of other entities potentially violating federal law in connection with the provision of sex-rejecting procedures to minors. At all times during the investigation, NYU and UPMC remained cooperative and solutions-driven.
My colleague Becca Lower shared more details on the then first-of-its-kind settlement by the DOJ, back in May, with Texas Children's.
AG Blanche also announced the agreement on his official X account, with a veiled warning to other providers that this practice won't be tolerated.
The Department of Justice just secured an end to “gender affirming care” for minors at two more hospital systems: NYU and UPMC. Since January 20, 2025 over 40 systems have ended these procedures across the country— including six of the largest systems as a result of…
— Attorney General Todd Blanche (@AGToddBlanche) September 18, 2026
AG Blanche writes:
The Department of Justice just secured an end to “gender affirming care” for minors at two more hospital systems: NYU and UPMC. Since January 20, 2025 over 40 systems have ended these procedures across the country— including six of the largest systems as a result of @TheJusticeDept lawsuits.
Hospitals that target children in these practices and then fraudulently obtain payments for the procedures, will be held accountable.
Administering these treatments to minors can and should be proscribed. The kids seeking these treatments are vulnerable, and we've seen too many cases where kids were coerced into these treatments and procedures by adult caregivers or even their own parents. That's a serious ethical concern; the abandonment of informed consent and primum non nocere is another. It's too bad that it took a Justice Department that is actually concerned about these things to get this issue addressed, but at least it's happening now. These providers have no justification for administering permanent, life-altering, and generally debilitating treatments to minors, treatments that will forever deny them a normal adulthood.
Adults may do as they please concerning these treatments, and much good may it do them. But we should protect children from what is, in too many cases, the result not of a scrupulous mental health diagnosis, but rather a social contagion.