Transgender Care for Young Patients Remains On Hold at Virginia Hospitals

Children’s hospitals in Virginia have kept transgender services for patients younger than 19 on hold for more than a year following President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order.

They include the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, Norfolk-based Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters and Charlottesville-based UVA Health Children’s Hospital.

Trump’s order said that the U.S. will “not fund, sponsor, promote, assist or support” what he labeled “destructive” procedures.

Transgender services for minors typically include counseling and mental health support, along with treatments such as puberty blockers or hormone therapy. Surgeries on minors are extremely rare and involve patients ages 15 to 17 years, a Harvard study found.

Trump’s administration also recently adopted a rule prohibiting young people enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program from having transgender services covered by their insurance.

The president and his political allies have described transgender services for young people as ”mutilation” or “junk science,” while LGBTQ+ advocates have described the services as essential to transgender people’s well-being.

“I am heartbreakingly aware of the challenges that you are now facing and will do all that I can to support you and your family as we monitor this situation and comply with applicable law,” CHKD president Amy Sampson wrote in a letter to affected patients and their families last year announcing compliance with Trump’s order.

The order threatened to withhold federal funding from hospitals that continued to offer transgender care to young people, prompting the hospitals to pause those services. A multi-state lawsuit filed in February 2025 has since been tied up in court.

A judge temporarily ordered the administration to continue funding hospitals that offered this care to young people, but the administration has since appealed.

With the case still active, hospitals remain in limbo over whether to resume those services.

The case, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, includes Virginia residents Kristin Chapman and her daughter, identified in the filing as “W.G.” Chapman’s family moved to Virginia from Tennessee following that state’s 2023 ban on transgender care for minors to ensure that W.G. could continue to receive services.

“I thought Virginia would be a safe place for me and my daughter. Instead, I am heartbroken, tired, and scared,” Chapman said in a statement.

The lawsuit alleges that Trump’s order discriminates on the basis of sex and disability and exceeds the president’s authority.

Va. lawmakers, Spanberger grapple with loss of federal healthcare funds for trans youth 

Though the administration has appealed the previous ruling, ACLU lawyer Joshua Stryker emphasized that hospitals could continue to treat the order as ineffective in the meantime.

“There is absolutely nothing in federal law preventing hospitals from providing this lawful care,” he said.

The next court date is set for Dec. 11 in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the Fourth Circuit.

Opposing transgender minors’ access to sports or healthcare has been a pillar of Republican campaigns and legislative agendas in recent years.

The matter was a flagship issue for Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears in 2025, when she lost to now-governor Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat. Spanberger has since quietly repealed a state rule from former Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration that would have limited transgender students’ participation in sports or use of certain facilities.

Citing Trump’s election in 2024 amid anti-trans rhetoric, a recent memo from the American Principles Project shared with members of the press declares that Democrats are “out of step on transgender issues.”

It called highlighting the parties’ differing stances a “smart strategy” in this year’s midterm elections.

Though transgender policy debates have not figured prominently in Virginia’s congressional races so far this year, the uncertain legal landscape continues to affect hospitals’ policies.

ACLU of Virginia attorney Wyatt Rolla said the government should not be involved in families’ private healthcare decisions.

“Decisions about healthcare, including for transgender youth, should be made by families and their doctors — not the government,” they said.

By Charlotte Rene Woods, Virginia Mercury

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