Attorney General Kathy Jennings joined a lawsuit filed Aug. 1 to protect transgender youths’ access to medically necessary care.
The lawsuit seeks protections from a federal court to ensure hospitals continue to provide medically appropriate care to transgender people 19 years old and younger.
Gender affirming care – which can include puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones – is associated with 73 percent lower odds of suicidality over a 12-month follow-up, according to a 2022 study.
Delaware state law permits and protects this type of care. Gov. Matt Meyer signed an executive order in June protecting gender-affirming care and providers.
“It becomes clearer every day that there simply is no bottom to this administration’s cruelty,” Jennings said in a Department of Justice press release. “With his agenda failing and his popularity plummeting, the president is turning to time-tested tactics of demagogues: turning vulnerable people into scapegoats, obsessing over their private lives, and intruding on medical decisions. These stunts make kids into political props and do nothing to help Americans. They are despicable, dangerous, and illegal.”
Meyer’s executive order acts as what he described as a “legal firewall.” That means the state will not honor subpoenas or extradition requests from other states criminalizing gender-affirming care.
Still, Delaware is seeing reduced services for trans patients, according to the DOJ press release.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January that seeks to deter providers from offering gender-affirming care to minors. It refers to this care as “chemical and surgical mutilation.”
A 2024 study from Harvard says concerns around gender-affirming surgery may be unwarranted. It finds that there were no gender-affirming surgical procedures on minors 12 years and younger in 2019.
It also finds that 97 percent of breast reductions on minors were performed on cisgender males.
Jennings joins others in the lawsuit, including the 15 attorneys general and Pennsylvania’s governor.
The lawsuit alleges the administration is overstepping by intruding on doctors’ and hospitals’ operations.
