Two Colorado hospitals to resume gender-affirming care for youth
Two Colorado hospitals on Wednesday announced they will resume gender-affirming care for people ages 18 and younger.
The hospitals, Children’s Hospital Colorado and Denver Health, had stopped providing certain forms of care for transgender youth earlier this month, following an order from President Donald Trump that threatened to pull federal funding if hospitals provided the care to minors.
Wednesday’s reversal came after Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser joined a lawsuit filed in Washington state seeking to block the order. The judge in that case issued a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration Friday. With Colorado joining the case this week, Colorado hospitals will likely fall under the protection of that restraining order.
For families of transgender children, the announcement brought a wave of relief after weeks of heartbreak and scrambling to find new places to receive care.
Brittany, a Denver mom whose daughter receives gender-affirming care at Children’s TRUE Center, said Children’s sent a message to patients Wednesday afternoon notifying them of the resumption.
“I immediately cried,” she said. “And it was the first time that it was happy tears. It’s been so long now and there’s been so many tears and none of them were good.”
She asked that The Sun use only her first name out of fear for her family’s and her daughter’s safety.
In a statement, Children’s Hospital said it plans to resume providing gender-affirming care Feb. 24, so long as the judge in Washington extends the restraining order to cover Colorado.
“Children’s Hospital Colorado believes that families know what is best for their child,” the hospital’s statement read. “Every family should have the right to access expert medical care to support their child’s well-being, including gender-diverse youth.”
Children’s said, though, that it would continue to monitor the legal situation and is committed to providing care “within the scope of the law.”
Likewise, Denver Health said its existing patients 18 and younger will for now be able to continue to receive hormone therapy and treatments that block the onset of puberty. New Colorado patients will also be able to initiate care.
“We recognize the strain that actions made outside of our control are having on our patients, their families and their care teams,” Denver Health said in a statement. “We appreciate the community’s understanding and support as we navigate these sensitive issues and remain focused on providing high-quality care for all of our patients.”
The Trump administration order, issued in late January, said “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.”
To enforce the order, the administration sought to block federal funding — including potentially access to payments by the Medicaid and Medicare systems — to hospitals that provide either gender-affirming surgeries or nonsurgical care like hormone therapy.
While Children’s and Denver Health provide the latter, neither offers surgeries to patients under 18.
A third health system in Colorado, UCHealth, does not provide gender-affirming care to minors, but it does to people who are 18 and older. The hospital system has halted that care for 18-year-olds, while continuing it for those 19 and older. A UCHealth spokesperson said the system is not changing that policy for the time being and is “awaiting a more permanent decision from federal courts that may resolve the uncertainty around providing this care.”
Two federal judges — the one in Washington state and another in Maryland — have issued temporary restraining orders preventing the Trump administration from enforcing its order.
In a statement, Weiser — who has announced he will run for governor in 2026 — said prior to joining the lawsuit in Washington he met with parents and health care providers who feared “irreversible physical and mental health harms for transgender youth” if the Trump order were allowed to stand.
“Gender-affirming care is legally protected health care in Colorado, and with this lawsuit Colorado hospitals will again be free to provide critical care,” he said.
The states of Minnesota, Oregon and Washington are also involved in the lawsuit.
Brittany, the Denver mother whose daughter is transgender, said her daughter is too young to receive more than supportive care at Children’s — counseling check-ins and information sessions. But the ban had threatened the bloodwork she will soon need to monitor for signs of puberty.
For families with children taking hormones or puberty-blockers, Brittany said Children’s had provided six-month prescriptions to help ease the transition. But, she said, families had run into insurance denials to cover those prescriptions and, even if the family could pay out-of-pocket, pharmacies were refusing to fill prescriptions for six months at a time.
“Our families were having an extraordinarily difficult time getting this care,” she said. “So this is such a huge relief.”
But, she said hers and other families remain guarded that the current situation will hold.
“I don’t think anyone is really holding out hope,” she said. “It’s hard to say. It’s so rapidly changing. It doesn’t feel super-safe that it will be there forever, but for right now our kiddos can get what they need.”