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 Englert 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 , 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 2025, Children’s treated 257 kids with puberty blockers and 549 with hormones for gender dysphoria.
In December, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 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. , pausing enforcement of Kennedy’s declaration.
In April, an Oregon judge determined the federal government performing gender-affirming care because the department didn’t follow procedures for new rules and infringed on states’ rights to regulate medical care.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser released a statement that hospitals should feel safe providing gender-affirming care following the state Supreme Court ruling.
“The Colorado Supreme Court decision and the Oregon federal court order should give Children’s Hospital Colorado the direction it needs to resume gender-affirming care, and I hope the hospital will not delay another day,” he said.
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. , commissioned under a law temporarily banning minors with gender dysphoria from receiving hormonal treatment, found that youth who received the care had better mental health outcomes.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons to recommend delaying gender-affirming surgery until the patient turns 19, however. Only a small percentage of minors receiving gender-affirming care underwent surgery.
Hospitals in other states whose laws support gender-affirming care have also because they fear the loss of federal funding. Clinics that don’t accept Medicaid have been more likely to continue care as usual, though they may not be accessible to lower-income families.
