Community members and elected officials gathered outside the gates to the Stonewall National Monument on Feb. 18 to rally against NYU Langone’s recent decision to discontinue its Transgender Youth Health Program.
NYU Langone’s decision comes on the heels of the Trump administration’s threats to withhold federal funding from any hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to youth.
Co-sponsored by the NYC Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) Trans Rights & Bodily Autonomy (TRBA) Campaign Commission and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, the rally was scheduled to take place long before NYU Langone’s announcement reached organizers.
“So many attacks are coming down on us everyday that […] you just throw a rally and it turns out it will be a rapid-response rally to something, you know?” TRBA Co-Chair Daniel, who uses they/them pronouns, said in an interview with Gay City News.
“We planned this rally to launch our campaign, and then found out earlier today that NYU Langone, who had kind of been denying trans care to youth and children under the table, has made their policy official,” Daniel said later to kick off the rally. “They are caving to the fascist Trump administration and failing in their duty of care as a hospital.”
This sentiment was echoed throughout the rally by a lineup of local elected representatives, Democratic Socialist candidates running for local office, and community members who spoke about their own experiences.
“This is not our first go-around with NYU Langone,” Sen. Kristen Gonzalez, who represents the 59th District (including NYU Langone’s Midtown Campus on the East Side of Manhattan), said at the rally. “Last year, after an executive order, NYU Langone was the first to raise their hand and say they were cancelling appointments for gender-affirming youth. But we were quick to work with the attorney general’s office and show that that is not in accordance with state law, that that is discrimination.”
Gonzalez continued, “What is so disappointing and so disturbing about this decision is that what NYU Langone has done today is show that [the Trump Administration’s] fear campaign works, that they can capitulate to the Trump Administration and set a tone for other hospital networks — not only in this city, but nationwide.”
Gonzalez touched on the importance of organizing within one’s community and defending health care access for all, urging attendees to call their local representatives and demand action.
Meanwhile, NYU Langone is not the only hospital making headlines for imposing restrictions on gender-affirming care. Lorelei Crean, a trans rights activist and one of the speakers at the event, recalled being denied access to gender-affirming care at Mount Sinai after the president signed an executive order last year calling to restrict federal funds for providers offering gender-affirming care for individuals under the age of 19. Mount Sinai was one of several private hospitals to pull back on gender-affirming care early last year.
“I began attempting to get an appointment at the start of 2025, when I was still 17 years old,” Crean recalled. “My parents called Mount Sinai, attempting to get an appointment to discuss getting gender-affirming care. They told my dad they would call back by Friday. Every day of that first week, I would call home from school and excitedly ask my dad if they called. But they didn’t. Friday rolls around, no calls, so my dad calls back, and they say, ‘Next Friday,’ but they [didn’t call], and this continues for months and months and months, with Mount Sinai giving us the run-around again and again and again.”
Crean added: “I am now 18 and a senior in high school. After more than a year of trying to get an appointment at Mount Sinai, I was finally able to get one as a consultation just because I was a minor… At that appointment last week, I asked why I was denied an appointment for so long, and a nurse told me, point blank, that they stopped giving appointments to trans youth because of the financial threats from the Trump administration.”
“The intersection between trans struggles and class struggles is undeniable,” said Kim Watson-Benjamin, who serves as the LGBTQ & health coordinator in NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ office. “Working-class trans individuals — particularly the Black and Brown trans community — face the hardest barriers when care is modified. We cannot separate economic justice from LGBT liberation. We cannot rely on corporations or capital to provide what our communities need. Private hospitals and profit-driven systems have failed us.”
Other speakers included an organizer from the Starbucks Workers United union, who called on protesters to withdraw their support from major companies that withhold or restrict employee access to health care to maximize profits.
State Sen. Jabari Brisport, the first out gay Black lawmaker elected to the State Legislature, also spoke at the rally.
“I have the honor of quoting labor organizer Mother Jones, who said, ‘We must mourn the dead, but fight like hell for the living,’” Brisport said. “And the time has come to fight like hell for the living.”
Brisport added: “It has come way beyond time to dissolve away these boards of directors, these hospital CEOs, and build a single-payer universal healthcare system that’s not beholden to profit — it’s only beholden to the people.”
Rabbi Abby Stein, the first ordained rabbi from an Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community to come out as transgender, spoke at the rally and compared sentiments about trans people to the moon, which is only visible sometimes.
“They want to erase us,” Rabbi Stein said. “[But] even if the shine goes away, we’re gonna come back.”
This year, DSA TRBA is launching a campaign calling for free gender-affirming care for all trans New Yorkers through state-funded clinics. For more information on DSA TRBA’s campaign and future events, click here.
