By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) -Families of transgender teens and LGBT advocacy groups on Friday said that U.S. health agencies had violated a court ruling that blocked them from enforcing President Donald Trump’s executive order halting federal funding to healthcare providers that offer gender transition treatments to people under 19.
The plaintiffs said the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services violated the ruling by issuing a memo to healthcare providers on Wednesday that it “may consider” terminating federal grants if they provide transgender healthcare to minors, including puberty blockers, hormones or surgery for the purpose of gender transition.
Two other health agencies also sent out the memo, which used the same title as Trump’s order, Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, on Thursday.
The CMS memo came the day after U.S. District Judge Brendan Hurson in Greenbelt, Maryland blocked the administration from cutting off funds to healthcare providers to enforce Trump’s order, or another executive order barring the use of federal funds to “promote gender ideology.” Hurson extended his earlier temporary ruling for as long as the lawsuit is pending.
The plaintiffs said on Friday that the new memos attempted to get around Hurson’s order by telling providers that funding may be cut off in the future, rather than cutting it off immediately, but would nonetheless immediately harm families by intimidating hospitals into stopping the treatments.
“That conditional phrasing changes nothing,” the plaintiffs said in their motion. “The notices are designed to inflict on plaintiffs precisely the same immediate harm as the Executive Orders in precisely the same way: through the (renewed) threat of revocation of funding.”
They asked Hurson to enforce his earlier ruling by ordering the agencies to withdraw the memo.
CMS and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In addition to the lawsuit by the families and LGBT rights group PFLAG, the Democrat-led states of Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington have also sued over the Republican president’s orders.
U.S. District Court Judge Lauren King in Seattle, who is overseeing that case, last week issued a preliminary injunction in the states’ favor. Unlike Hurson’s nationwide order, her ruling is limited to enforcement within the four states.
Both judges, who were appointed by Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, agreed with plaintiffs that Trump’s orders exceeded his authority to control federal funds and illegally discriminated against transgender people.
More than half of the 50 states have passed laws or policies that ban transgender healthcare for minors, some of which have been blocked or overturned by the courts. A challenge to Tennessee’s ban has been heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, whose ultimate ruling could determine the legality of such bans.
(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Cynthia Osterman)
