Seven families with transgender children sued the Trump administration Tuesday over an executive order meant to broadly restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender children and teenagers up to 19 years old, calling it and other recent orders targeting trans rights “unlawful and unconstitutional.”
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a Baltimore federal court, argues Trump’s executive order infringes on the rights of parents to make medical decisions for their children and unlawfully seeks to withhold funds that Congress previously authorized.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the private law firms Hogan Lovells and Jenner & Block represent the plaintiffs.
“Under our Constitution, it is Congress, not the President, who is vested with the power of the purse,” the lawsuit states. “The President does not have unilateral power to withhold federal funds that have been previously authorized by Congress and signed into law, and the President does not have the power to impose his own conditions on the use of funds when Congress has not delegated to him the power to do so.”
PFLAG, an organization supporting LGBTQ people and families, and GLMA, a network of LGBTQ health professionals, are also plaintiffs in the case, filed one week after Trump signed an order directing federal agencies to cut government funding for transition-related care. The order would impact programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Tricare, the military’s health program.
