A judge in Washington state has issued a temporary restraining order over President Trump’s executive order that withholds federal funding to health care providers who prescribe youth puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or who perform surgeries for gender dysphoria.
Judge Lauren King, in the Western Washington District Court, issued the order on Friday, two weeks after Trump signed the order, called “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” on Jan. 28.
It comes as a federal judge in Maryland issued a similar temporary restraining order on Thursday after a lawsuit was filed on behalf of families with transgender and nonbinary children who said they weren’t able to get the health care they needed.
Judge Brendan Hurson, who was nominated by Biden, set the order to last for 14 days as the case proceeds through the courts,
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King said the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in the lawsuit because the executive order discriminates against transgender minors.
Trump’s order says in part: “Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”
Trump later added on Truth Social, “Today, it was my great honor to sign an Executive Order banning the chemical castration and medical mutilation of innocent children in the United States of America. Our Nation will no longer fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support so-called ‘gender affirming care,’ which has already ruined far too many precious lives. My Order directs Agencies to use every available means to cut off Federal financial participation in institutions which seek to provide these barbaric medical procedures, that should have never been allowed to take place!”
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Mark Trammell, the executive director and general counsel of the Center for American Liberty, which represents some detransitioners in lawsuits, praised Trump’s action.
“President Trump is to be commended for his incredible leadership protecting vulnerable children from the gender industrial complex,” Trammell said. “This executive order rightly distances federal agencies from the discredited World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) while also withholding federal funding from institutions that chemically and surgically mutilate kids.”
“It is pathetic that Joe Biden lacked the moral and intellectual clarity to issue such an executive order, instead elevating politics over the health of vulnerable children,” he added.
Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson said in response to the order, “Everyone deserves the freedom to make deeply personal health care decisions for themselves and their families – no matter your income, zip code, or health coverage. This executive order is a brazen attempt to put politicians in between people and their doctors, preventing them from accessing evidence-based health care supported by every major medical association in the country.”
“It is deeply unfair to play politics with people’s lives and strip transgender young people, their families, and their providers of the freedom to make necessary health care decisions. Questions about this care should be answered by doctors – not politicians — and decisions must rest with families, doctors, and the patient.”
Fox News’ Louis Casiano and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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