One day after LGBTQ advocates rallied at City Hall to call to encourage the city to increase financial support for transgender New Yorkers, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced what his administration described as three new efforts to protect and expand gender-affirming care across the five boroughs.
The Mamdani administration on June 26 said it would steer an already-announced $15 million towards supporting a direct care access fund for providers of youth gender-affirming care; launch a call and text line directing New Yorkers to care, services, and information regarding gender-affirming care; and fund research to better support access to gender-affirming care and improve outcomes.
During a June 2 interview on the Brian Lehrer Show, Mamdani mentioned his plan to steer $15 million towards gender-affirming care “to ensure that we can start to bridge the gap of the funding that has been stripped of this care.”
The announcement follows a court order blocking, for now, an effort by the federal government to obtain medical records related to gender-affirming care in New York City. The Mamdani administration said it directed its Law Department to be prepared to take legal action against federal threats to gender-affirming care for youth and adults. Earlier this month, the Law Department filed an amicus brief in support of trans youth and adults who are battling the feds in court over the grand jury subpoenas.
Multiple private hospitals, including NYU Langone and Mount Sinai, have imposed restrictions on gender-affirming care for youth after President Donald Trump signed an executive order last year seeking to ban care for youth and even adults.
“Every New Yorker should have the freedom to live as themselves and access the health care they need,” Mamdani said in a written statement. “As the federal government attacks transgender people and attempts to intimidate patients, families and providers, New York City is stepping up. We will protect care, support the providers delivering it and make clear that trans New Yorkers belong in this city. Healthcare is a human right, and we will do everything in our power to defend it.”
The administration is describing the $15 million fund as a “proactive” investment as trans individuals face greater barriers to care. In an interview with Gay City News ahead of last year’s general election for mayor, Mamdani said his platform for LGBTQ New Yorkers called to allocate “$65 million in funding for gender-affirming care that would replace the amount of funding that the federal government is threatening to strip of this city in an attempt to attack trans and queer New Yorkers.”
Taylor Brown, the director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs, issued a written statement invoking her own experience, saying she knows “first-hand that gender-affirming care for the treatment of gender dysphoria is life-saving.”
“The Federal government’s ideological war against gender affirming care is the result of the basest political instincts, not science or concern for transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary (TGNCNB) young people,” Brown said. “The Federal government’s irresponsible threats and attacks are existential; and contrary to fundamental principles of law, medicine, individual autonomy, and the basic humanity of TGNCNB people.”
The Mamdani administration’s announcement drew praise from several out city lawmakers, including Justin Sanchez of the Bronx and Chi Ossé of Brooklyn, who both serve as co-chairs of the Council’s LGBTQIA+ Caucus, and Lynn Schulman of Queens.
“Medical decisions belong to patients, families, and doctors, never to politicians in Washington who treat trans lives as political pawns,” Ossé said in a written statement. “Whether it’s Pride Month or not, we must honor the rich history that trans New Yorkers paved for the entire LGBTQIA+ community, and this investment is part of that. As co-chair of the LGBTQIA+ Caucus, I look forward to working with the administration to implement this life-saving investment.”
The NYC Trans and Queer Coalition, which is made up of dozens of LGBTQ service providers, also hailed the announcement, saying the funding “will be the life raft that youth and their families have been searching for since the federal attacks and private hospitals’ deicison to remove necessary healthcare.”
Mamdani’s announcement comes three weeks after his administration said it would be offering new gender-affirming care services in a pilot program at a clinic Corona, Queens, but that care will be limited to adults 19 years of age and older. When asked during a City Council hearing to explain why the care will not be available for youth, Health Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin cited “the balance that we have strike,” saying that while the city is “committed to this issue and want to make sure that we provide the services and resources for youth,” he stressed the need to make sure “we don’t expose ourselves to clawbacks from the federal government, which disrupt the rest of the care that we can give.”
The city’s public hospital system, New York Health + Hospitals, does continue to provide gender-affirming care for youth and adults, a Health + Hospitals spokesperson confirmed to Gay City News earlier in the month.
