Statement: Los Angeles LGBT Center Condemns Trump Administration’s Proposed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Rules Endangering Transgender Youth and Countless Americans
LOS ANGELES, CA, Dec. 18, 2025 —In response to the release of the proposed rules by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services concerning trans youth health care, Los Angeles LGBT Center CEO Joe Hollendoner issued the following statement:
The Los Angeles LGBT Center condemns the Trump Administration’s proposed rules from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which cruelly target transgender youth by attempting to deny Medicaid recipients access to lifesaving care. These rules would also destabilize safety-net hospitals by blocking all Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement if they continue to provide gender-affirming care to anyone under the age of 19—regardless of a patient’s insurance status.
This is yet another attack by the Trump Administration on the transgender community and on healthcare access for all Americans. These proposals are unprecedented in their insidiousness, placing countless lives—not only those of transgender youth—at risk. Hospitals should never be forced to choose between providing lifesaving care to transgender young people and delivering critical services like cancer treatment to other patients. Yet this is exactly the division and harm these rules are designed to create.
This isn’t a hypothetical either. We have already seen Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and other health systems across the country pre-comply with executive orders that sought to accomplish exactly what these rules attempt to do. Thousands of transgender youth have already lost access to gender affirming care, and unless these rules are stopped, it is believed that the vast majority of trans youth will be without care.
Let’s be clear: these rules are dangerous for all Americans and the consequences of approving them would be devastating. They ignore overwhelming medical evidence backing the benefits of gender-affirming care for transgender youth and politicize healthcare decisions that should remain between families and their medical providers.
The Center demands that CMS immediately withdraw these proposed rules and implore healthcare providers not to pre-comply with them. We call on Congress, state leaders, and healthcare advocates to publicly and unequivocally condemn them. We also urge Attorney General Bonta to continue his efforts to ensure that gender-affirming care remains a legal and required service in California, and we call on Governor Newsom to champion and fund statewide efforts to protect access to this essential care.
We invite the LGBTQ+ community and our allies to submit formal opposition during the limited public comment period by signing up for the Center’s Policy Action Newsletter for instructions and updates.
The Center will fight relentlessly alongside the TGNBI+ community to defeat these rules and protect access to gender-affirming care. We are prepared to pursue and support legal challenges and will stand with trans youth, their families, and healthcare providers to defend their medical care.
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About the Los Angeles LGBT Center
Since 1969 the Los Angeles LGBT Center has cared for, championed, and celebrated LGBT individuals and families in Los Angeles and beyond. Today the Center’s nearly 800 employees provide services for more LGBT people than any other organization in the world, offering programs, services, and global advocacy that span four broad categories: Health, Social Services and Housing, Culture and Education, Leadership and Advocacy. We are an unstoppable force in the fight against bigotry and the struggle to build a better world; a world in which LGBT people thrive as healthy, equal, and complete members of society. Learn more at lalgbtcenter.org.