Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul is suing the Trump administration over its efforts to ban gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary youth.
Raoul filed the lawsuit Aug. 1 with California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong.
The attorneys general claim President Donald Trump’s administration is overstepping its authority by using threats of criminal prosecution and federal investigations to pressure health care providers into suspending medically appropriate care for trans people under 19—even in states like Illinois where such care is legal and protected.
“The administration has overstepped its authority by using threats of federal investigation and criminal prosecution under laws that do not apply to this care,” Raoul said. “These threats pressured providers to stop offering life-saving care.”
Since taking office, Trump has unleashed a series of attacks attempting to erase transgender and nonbinary people and limit access to gender-affirming care.
This includes a Jan. 28 executive order that uses inflammatory and inaccurate language to refer to lawful health care for transgender youth and young adults as “chemical and surgical mutilation.”
Since then, the U.S. Department of Justice has issued more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics involved in offering gender-affirming care to youth, demanded private patient data and suggested criminal charges may follow, according to Raoul’s office.
“Baseless threats of civil and criminal prosecution have led to Illinois providers pulling back on care altogether,” Raoul said. “This administration is driving a wedge between patients and healthcare providers from providing patients the health care that they need.”
Numerous hospitals across the country have already suspended their gender-affirming care services for youth in light of these threats, including UI Health, UChicago Medicine, Rush University Medical Center and Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.
These rollbacks have happened in spite of state laws protecting access to gender-affirming care in Illinois, such as the Illinois Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity, and the Patient and Provider Protection Act, which was designed to shield Illinois-based providers from legal attacks coming from outside the state.
Raoul said he did not believe hospitals complying with Trump’s orders were discriminating, because Illinois’s law does not mandate that all doctors, providers or hospitals provide gender-affirming care.
“There are hospitals that provide gender affirming care historically, and there are hospitals who have not provided gender affirming care,” Raoul said. “There are hospitals that provide certain types of care in other areas, and there are hospitals that do not provide other kinds of care. There’s nothing on the books that mandates that hospitals provide all medical care that’s available.”
Medical experts have widely recognized gender-affirming care as a life-saving medical treatment for transgender people facing gender dysphoria. Every major national medical association has recognized that such care is medically necessary.
Denying gender-affirming care to transgender people can lead to a greater incidence of anxiety, depression and self-harm, experts have said.
Raoul said the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict gender-affirming care violate the Constitution, exceed federal authority and undermine state laws protecting such treatment.
Joining in the lawsuit are other attorneys general from Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Wisconsin, as well as the state of Pennsylvania.
“We are asking the court to block these actions and protect access to care for patients who desperately need it,” Raoul said. “I’m proud to defend the rights of all transgender people to have access to health care that they deserve to live full and healthy lives with the same opportunities and autonomy as their friends and neighbors.”