AG's office demands NYU hospital resume puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones to teens

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, March 04, 2026

New York Attorney General Letitia James' office is demanding that a Manhattan hospital resume the provision of puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones to gender dysphoric adolescents, which the hospital stopped after President Donald Trump’s administration threatened to withdraw federal funding. 

In a letter sent last week to NYU Langone’s lawyers, the Office of the New York State Attorney General said that the hospital’s decision last month to shutter its Transgender Youth Health Program violated the state’s anti-discrimination laws. 

According to a portion of the letter cited by CBS News this week, James' office accused NYU Langone of “jeopardizing access to medically necessary healthcare for some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers.”

The letter contends that NYU Langone’s policy change is “self-imposed,” saying there has been "no change in federal law to require the cessation of medically necessary transgender healthcare.” The letter gives the hospital 10 days to notify James' office if it has complied with its demand.

"In sum, no federal action has changed the law; medically necessary healthcare for transgender adolescents remains legal and covered by federal programs," the letter reads. "Without a formal change in the law, meaning an action from which legal consequences will flow, such as a published final rule upheld by the courts, NYU Langone's legal obligations to its patients are unchanged."

Darsana Srinivasan, who leads the office’s health care bureau, noted in the letter that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones remain available to minors who do not identify as the opposite sex. 

“New York state laws prohibit discrimination based on a patient’s membership in a protected class,” the official stated in the letter, as quoted by The New York Times. 

“The sudden discontinuation of medically necessary transgender healthcare can have severe, negative health outcomes,” Srinivasan added. “Accordingly, the Attorney General is extremely concerned by your institution’s decision to cease the provision of care to this vulnerable, minority population.”

The letter orders the hospital “to immediately resume all service offerings as they had before the change in policy,” making puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones available again to individuals under the age of 19. 

The attorney general’s office and NYU Langone did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment. 

The hospital announced last month that it would stop providing so-called “gender-affirming care” for certain individuals, citing the departure of one of its medical directors and “the current regulatory environment.” 

The program's closure followed Trump's signing of an executive order in January to “[protect] children from chemical and surgical mutilation,” such as sex-change surgeries, puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormone drugs.

"It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called 'transition' of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit these destructive and life-altering procedures,” the order declared. 

Last year, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a letter to healthcare providers and state medical boards nationwide, urging them to read a report the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published on the treatment of pediatric gender dysphoria.

In the executive summary, the report contends there is "currently no international consensus about best practices for the care of children and adolescents with gender dysphoria."

The report criticized the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s guidelines for treating children with gender dysphoria, which “emphasizes the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, as well as surgeries, and casts suspicion on psychotherapeutic approaches for management of gender dysphoria."

In December 2024, the United Kingdom's National Health Service moved to indefinitely ban the use of puberty-blocking drugs on children for the foreseeable future, except for use in clinical trials.

"The Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) has provided independent expert advice that there is currently an unacceptable safety risk in the continued prescription of puberty blockers to children," stated the U.K.'s Department of Health and Social Care.

"Puberty blockers for the treatment of gender incongruence and/or gender dysphoria in under 18s were banned temporarily in May 2024 after the Cass Review found there was insufficient evidence to show they were safe. Legislation will be updated today to make the order indefinite and will be reviewed in 2027."

Commissioned by the NHS in 2020 as a review of its gender identity services for youth, the "Cass Review" found there is "no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress."