Colorado Supreme Court says Children’s Hospital must resume gender-affirming care for minors

The Colorado Supreme Court has ordered the Children’s Hospital Colorado to resume gender-affirming care for minor patients. A 5-3 ruling came after the hospital stopped care amid funding threats that stepped up after President Donald Trump’s return to power.Justices for the state court said the decision to abruptly end care earlier this year wrongly harmed patients.“Petitioners and other transgender youth who sought such care from CHC were suddenly abandoned during a precarious time. Without access to puberty blockers and hormone therapy, these children will go through puberty and develop characteristics of a sex with which they do not identify,” reads a majority ruling penned by Justice William Hood. “Petitioners have experienced depression, and in at least two instances, suicidal ideation, because they can no longer access medical gender-affirming care.”In December, the hospital paused all gender-affirming care for minors. That decision came as the Trump administration imposed guidelines limiting access to any such care and threatening federal funding for those institutions defying that direction. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. said funding could be jeopardized even if physicians prescribe puberty blockers or hormone therapy to minors, not just surgeries, which Children’s Hospital Colorado has never offered for those under age 18.That loss of dollars could be crippling for Children’s Hospital Colorado, which received most of its $180 million in funding from the federal government, according to The New York Times. That’s in part because more than half of all patients at the hospital rely on Medicaid.But Colorado justices say cutting off treatments, including to long-term patients who need continuity of care, effectively served as discrimination against individuals based on their gender identity. That violates the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which recognized sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes.?