As LGBT advocates and medical organizations challenge the Trump administration’s ban on transgender treatments for minors, legal expert Sarah Marshall Perry of the Heritage Foundation warns that this lawsuit is just the ‘tip of the iceberg,’ driven by ‘faulty interpretations,’ with more legal battles expected in the coming months.
‘This is a $5 billion a year industry,’ Perry said. ‘I would not expect what I like to call the gender ghouls to go quietly into that good night, they are going to suddenly be faced with a devastating reckoning on exactly where their bottom line lies.’
‘If they want to fight for private insurance coverage through Cigna or Blue Cross Blue Shield, that’s entirely their prerogative,’ Perry said, adding that these companies have ‘very big lobbying presences’ to pursue coverage through private insurers.
‘There is a reason that this type of so-called medical care proliferated, and that’s because they had governmental cover,’ she said.
The lawsuit was filed in Baltimore federal court and seeks an immediate injunction to delay the implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order from last week.
‘Over the past week, hospitals across the country have abruptly halted medical care for transgender people under nineteen, canceling appointments and turning away some patients who have waited years to receive medically necessary care for gender dysphoria,’ the lawsuit reads.
‘This sudden shutdown in care was the direct and immediate result of an Executive Order that President Trump issued on January 28, 2025 — Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation — directing all federal agencies to ‘immediately take appropriate steps to ensure that institutions receiving Federal research or education grants end gender-affirming medical care for people under nineteen (the ‘Denial of Care Order’).’
The group of plaintiffs claims executive orders are unlawful and unconstitutional, saying the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse.
However, Perry argued that existing federal coverage for gender-related procedures for minors stems from a misinterpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, a decision that several federal courts have since ruled does not support such policies.
‘Remember that we’re dealing with the vestiges of an administration that was all in on gender identitarianism and was manipulating federal case law to be able to push through policies that have already been struck down,’ Perry said. ‘I think the President is acting wisely in an anticipatory stance to make sure that the federal funding cap is turned off, while we can get some of these challenges through court and determine whether or not, first, if there is a parental right to these particularly controversial procedures.’
She said that a federal judge already ruled against former President Joe Biden’s re-interpretation of Title IX, referring to U.S. District Court Chief Judge Danny Reeves vacating the regulation in January, in which the previous administration had expanded sex discrimination protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Reeves ruled that Biden’s expansion contradicted the original intent of Title IX, stating that incorporating gender identity into the statute ‘eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless.’
Perry noted that various federal statutes, including the Affordable Care Act’s anti-discrimination provisions, were ‘manipulated’ by the previous administration to advance gender identity policies and noted that courts have increasingly pushed back against these interpretations.
‘I think he is rightly acting in an anticipatory fashion,’ Perry said of Trump. ‘He is the chief enforcer of the law, and he has drawn a line in the sand, saying we’re going to cut the tap off until we find a way to get clarity on this, but in the meantime, we are not going to continue to fund the things that we know have catastrophic, devastating effects on minor kids.’
The lawsuit is the latest addition to those suing Trump over his gender-related executive orders.
The executive orders, signed in late January, include a reinstatement of the ban on transgender troops in the military, a ban on federal funding for sex changes for minors and a directive requiring federal agencies to recognize only ‘two sexes,’ male and female, in official standard of conduct.
A White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital they do not comment on pending litigation. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to weed out ‘radical gender ideology’ as one of his key administrative focuses.
The Supreme Court will also rule on a major case this term about a Tennessee law that will determine whether gender transition procedures can be banned for minors.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner contributed to this report.