State and city lawmakers rallied with advocates outside of NYU Langone’s Tisch Hospital in Manhattan on Feb. 6 to demand the complete restoration of gender-affirming care services nearly a week after at least three providers — including NYU Langone — allegedly canceled appointments for youth in response to the Trump administration’s executive order targeting gender-affirming care.
“We’re putting NYU on notice that we’re going to act if they don’t change their mind now,” Manhattan Assemblymember Harvey Epstein said during the press conference, which also drew out elected officials including State Senators Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Jabari Brisport, Assemblymembers Deborah Glick and Tony Simone, and Councilmember Erik Bottcher, who chairs the Council’s LGBTQIA+ Caucus. The event was organized by State Senator Kristen Gonzalez and also featured Public Advocate Jumaane Williams as well as City Councilmembers Keith Powers and Carlina Rivera.
The press conference marked the latest chapter in the fallout stemming from President Donald Trump’s Jan. 28 executive order, which called to withhold federal funds for providers of gender-affirming care for individuals under the age of 19 and directed the Health and Human Services secretary to “take all appropriate actions to end” gender-affirming care, “including regulatory and sub-regulatory actions.”
In response, multiple New York City hospitals, including NYU Langone, Mount Sinai Hospital System, and New York Presbyterian, allegedly started to restrict gender-affirming care for youth, including by canceling appointments, according to reports in the New York Times and The City. Others, though, have not stopped care, including New York City Health + Hospitals, which confirmed to Gay City News that gender-affirming care remains available as usual.
State Attorney General Letitia James subsequently sent a stern letter to providers urging them to get back to work. She reminded them of their obligation under New York State law to provide services without discriminating on the basis of sex or gender identity and cited a federal court ruling which she said blocked implementation of the order.
Despite the attorney general’s warnings, the lawmakers made it clear that the hospitals have yet to change course. Epstein, whose district encompasses the east side of Manhattan, said lawmakers “communicated directly” with NYU Langone, but he said the hospital “stood firm on their decision.”
Epstein echoed Attorney General James’ point that hospitals withholding care are violating state law, and he and other lawmakers cited the recent passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, which amended the Equal Protection of the Law clause of the state constitution to specify that “no person shall, because of… sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression… be subjected to any discrimination in their civil rights by any person or by any firm, corporation, or institution, or by the state or any agency or subdivision of the state pursuant to law.”
“NYU Langone is on notice that what they’re doing will have real ramifications to New Yorkers, and real ramifications to the contracts in New York City,” Epstein said. “They get hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions of dollars, from the State of New York to ensure they provide care… That care can’t continue if they engage in discrimination.”
Lawmakers also pointed to other protective measures in place, including a 2023 Trans Safe Haven law championed by Hoylman-Sigal and out gay Assemblymember Harry Bronson of Rochester to bar New York State from aiding in attempts by other states to take action against individuals for receiving gender-affirming care.
Bottcher, who represents Manhattan’s west side from W. 54th St. to Spring St., said the city’s LGBTQIA+ Caucus planned a Feb. 7 meeting with New York City-based hospitals involved to discuss this issue, but “a lot” of them canceled in advance.
“They pulled out of the meeting, including NYU, because of lawyers — overly cautious lawyers,” Bottcher said. “They’re on the wrong side of history, they’re on the wrong side of science, and they’re on the wrong side of medicine.”
Brisport, who represents Brooklyn and in 2020 became the first out LGBTQ Black person elected to the State Legislature, urged the public to remember that Germany in the 1920s was a hub of LGBTQ activity. By the 1930s, he said, “one of the first things the Nazis started doing was attacking trans people, gay people, erasing them, taking them out of the books, erasing medical research, erase, erase, erase.”
“To NYU, the first thing I’m going to say is, ‘Do not be complicit in letting history repeat itself.’ … Do not help the man in the White House take us down that same road.”
Brisport told Gay City News after the event that he would be checking in with hospitals in his borough to make sure they are continuing to provide gender-affirming care.
Williams, the only citywide official on hand, also slammed NYU Langone.
“When trans young people are committing suicide at higher rates, are homeless at higher rates, are trying to find ways to survive — and this is what we’re focused on? It makes no sense,” he said. “We all have to join together to make sure everyone gets what they need.”
Glick, the first out lawmaker elected to the New York State Legislature, said NYU “folded like a cheap suit” and echoed others who said the State of New York’s constitution shields protected classes from discrimination.
“What NYU did was an act of discrimination and cowardice,” Glick said. “We are not going to be pushed around and shoved around by an authoritarian government. We are going to stand for New Yorkers and we ask [NYU Langone] to do the same.”
Hoylman-Sigal emphasized the arduous battle for a comprehensive trans rights bill in New York State, culminating in the passage of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), which was signed into law in 2019 and added gender identity and expression as a protected class in New York State’s human rights and hate crimes laws.
“We stand on that law today,” Hoylman-Sigal said, stressing that hospitals should not “comply when they haven’t even asked you to do so except in an executive order that, frankly, nobody understands.”
Simone, referring to the president as a “dictator,” said the White House is trying to “invade” the rooms of hospital patients.
“So many parents have texted me, emailed me, saying their appointments have been cancelled indefinitely or paused,” he said. “You are endangering vital healthcare for our kids and we ask you to relent and allow gender-affirming care…”
Maeve Anderson, an out trans Hunter College student who lives in Kips Bay and is a patient at NYU Langone, recalled previously feeling a sense of pride living in the city of Stonewall — a city known for standing up for LGBTQ rights.
“So what a shame here today that an institution 10 blocks away from where I live is one of the few that cowered down and said, ‘No, we are going to abide in advance,’” Anderson said. “We cannot stand for it and we need to hold our institutions accountable.”
Anderson sent a letter to NYU Langone’s leadership blasting the hospital for caving in to what Anderson described as a “blatantly illegal” and “harmful” executive order. The hospital’s actions, Anderson charged, “betrays the trust of all New Yorkers and makes you complicit in the Trump administration’s dangerous assault on trans people.”
Representing SAGE – Advocacy & Services for LGBTQ+ Elders, Bryan Ellicott-Cook said older adults are watching attacks on trans youth with deep concern. SAGE serves LGBTQ older adults nationwide and operates five SAGE centers around New York City.
“[Older adults] know that when the attacks are coming for youth, it is only a matter of time before they come for adults — especially our elders, who are the marginalized group after youth,” Ellicott-Cook said.
Ellicott-Cook added: “The whole world is watching. NYU, if you can’t stand up for youth, what are you going to do when they come for elders? What are you going to do when they come for veterans? They already have.”
Gonzalez told Gay City News she has been trying to set up a meeting with NYU Langone, but lamented that the hospital has “yet to come up with a public statement” to this point.
“All the families that received cancellations are now without formal guidance,” Gonzalez said.
NYU Langone did not respond to a request for comment on Feb. 7.
