Governor Josh Shapiro of Abington Township joined 15 states and Washington, D.C. on Friday in a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s attempts to eliminate gender-affirming healthcare for transgender individuals under age 19.
The governor is the only named individual on the plaintiff’s list. The lawsuit alleges that denying gender-affirming care via executive order is unlawful and comes roughly a month after the U.S. Department of Justice subpoenaed more than 20 doctors and clinics that have been involved in transgender medical care.
The Department’s investigations include healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.
“Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi wrote in a statement.
“I am suing the Trump administration alongside 16 other states for threatening baseless civil investigations and criminal prosecutions against healthcare providers in Pennsylvania and trying to take medical decisions away from parents and local communities,” Shapiro said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “The freedom to make healthcare decisions should be between parents, their children and their doctor, and I will not stand by while the federal government tries to infringe on the rights and freedoms of Pennsylvania families.”
From the lawsuit:
Since taking office on January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump and his administration have relentlessly, cruelly, and unlawfully targeted transgender individuals. The Trump administration has sought to deny their very existence, banish transgender residents from the public square, and refuse them medically necessary healthcare through unlawful Executive Orders (EOs) and a raft of federal agency actions implementing those EOs. What’s more, the Attorney General has not minced words that she will use the Department of Justice to “bring [] an end” to gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents. The result is an atmosphere of fear and intimidation experienced by transgender individuals, their families and caregivers, and the medical professionals who seek only to provide necessary, lawful care to their patients.
This lawsuit challenges one of President Trump’s Executive Orders—E.O. 14,187, referenced herein as the “Denial of Care” Order—and two implementing actions taken by the Department of Justice that aim to eliminate the provision of medically necessary healthcare to transgender individuals under age 19—a category that includes not only minors, but also eighteen-year-olds who have reached the age of majority—by intimidating providers into ceasing care through threats of civil and criminal prosecution under laws unconnected to the lawful provision of this care.1 These threats have no basis in law. No federal law prohibits, much less criminalizes, the provision or receipt of gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents.2 In fact, federal healthcare programs have reimbursed the provision of such care for years.
“What we do not need in Pennsylvania are politicians — extremist politicians like Donald Trump, [Republican State Sen.] Doug Mastriano, and these others — trying to legislate a student’s participation the way they’ve tried to do on many other things, like on abortion rights or marriage equality,” Shapiro previously said in a public statement about a bill in the Pennsylvania legislature that would prohibit transgender students from participating in girls’ sports, WHYY reported.
In March, two school districts in Butler County and five individuals filed a 58-page petition against Governor Shapiro and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission’s (PHRC).
“In violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution, the PHRC has created a heretofore unimagined meaning of ‘sex’ within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” the petition alleges. “Under the PHRC regulations, there are multiple classifications of persons such as males, females, nonbinary, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or asexual individuals who by inclination, practice, identity or expression, having a history thereof, or being perceived, presumed or identified by others as having such an orientation.”
Friday’s lawsuit is one of several brought by Shapiro against the Trump administration this year. In July, Shapiro joined a filing which challenges the Trump administration’s decision to withhold more than $6 billion in education funding. A lawsuit filed by the governor in June accuses the Trump administration of terminating billions in already awarded funding to state and local governments, research institutions, universities and more.
Also in June, Shapiro sued the Trump administration in an effort to restore $13 million in funds for food banks and farmers that the U.S. Department of Agriculture eliminated earlier this year. In April, Shapiro jointly filed a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s cuts to AmeriCorps. In February, Shapiro filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s freeze of federal funding.
The lawsuit is below:
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