State's Supreme Court Sides With Families of Trans Youth

Colorado's top court has stepped into the gender-affirming-care fight, instructing the state's largest pediatric hospital to get back to work. In a 5-2 decision, the Colorado Supreme Court said a lower court should have ordered Children's Hospital Colorado to resume prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to transgender minors, despite the hospital's concerns that doing so could spur the federal government to slash hundreds of millions in Medicaid funding, reports Colorado Public Radio. Writing for the majority in Boe v. Children's Hospital Colorado, Justice William W. Hood III said the "immediate and irreparable" harm to young patients outweighed the hospital's fears of federal reprisals.

The court's ruling also noted that young patients had been "suddenly abandoned during a precarious time," leading to depression and even suicidal ideation in two patients, per the New York Times. Families had argued the hospital was treating transgender youth differently, as it continued prescribing the same medications to cisgender patients when medically indicated, per CPR. The hospital—which paused care last spring, then brought it back, then paused it again in January after being referred to federal investigators—says it's reviewing the ruling to figure out how to proceed next. Two justices dissented, saying the hospital acted to protect its financial survival, not out of bias. Justice Brian Boatright, one of the dissenters, wrote that the majority's ruling "completely minimizes the reality" of the hospital's money situation, per the Colorado Sun.

One parent of a transgender patient at CHC, however, makes clear the consequences of having gender-affirming care ripped away. "It's hard as a parent to be told by the same provider that this is the care your child needs, and see firsthand the relief that this care gives," that parent said after a hearing in February. "And then to have that same institution turn their back on you in this way feels like, well, my child's life is expendable." The case now returns to a lower court, which is expected to issue an injunction requiring the hospital to restart care. It's not clear if the hospital will resume offering such care ahead of such an injunction.