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Bowing to pressure from the Trump administration, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) — one of the country’s oldest providers of gender-affirming care for trans youth — has announced that it will close its Center for Transyouth Health and Development on July 22.
The Los Angeles Times reports that in a June 12 email to staff, hospital executives acknowledged that “there is no doubt that this is a painful and significant change to our organization and a challenge to CHLA’s mission, vision, and values.”
The email stated that the hospital’s decision to close the center “follows a lengthy and thorough assessment of the increasingly severe impacts of federal administrative actions and proposed policies,” and that continuing to operate it would endanger the hospital’s ability to care for “hundreds of thousands” of other pediatric patients.
CHLA is currently one of the only medical facilities in the United States that provides puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries for trans youth using public insurance.
On January 28, Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to prohibit doctors from providing gender-affirming care to trans youth ages 19 years and under by withholding federal funding from hospitals that provide it. Although a federal judge extended a nationwide block on the enforcement of the executive order back in March, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued an April memo demanding that U.S. Attorneys investigate and prosecute hospitals providing gender-affirming care to trans youth by claiming that these providers were performing what she falsely called “female genital mutilation” on patients under 18, which is a felony under U.S. federal law.
Hospital executives also pointed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ May report on trans youth. The HHS memo, which has been roundly condemned by medical experts, directly criticizes the CHLA Center’s medical director, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, for providing gender-affirming care.
“These threats are no longer theoretical,” the email continued. “The federal government has already cut off hundreds of millions of dollars from U.S. academic and research institutions for noncompliance with executive orders, often with little to no warning.”
CHLA executives said that because of the hospital’s “fragile” fiscal position, it would only be able to continue operations for 50 days without federal funding. Nearly two-thirds of the hospital’s annual funding comes from the federal government. If it were to close, CHLA said that LA County would lose nearly 40% of its pediatric hospital beds.
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