Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered gender-affirming care procedures for youth to be investigated in a Tuesday memo.
Bondi in the memo ordered employees of the Justice Department look into and hold accountable “medical providers and pharmaceutical companies that mislead the public about the long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilations” for young people, seeminly a reference to gender-affirming care treatments including hormone replacement treatment.
Bondi cast the memo as a necessary action under an executive order from President Trump from January that aimed to restrict access to gender-affirming care for people under the age of 19.
She also blamed “gender ideology” for children unnecessarily getting gender-affirming care or surgery.
“Gender ideology, masked as science, teaches that children should process adolescent stress and confusion as a case of mistaken identity and that the solution is not to root out and eliminate the underlying condition but to acquiesce in it permanently through life-altering chemical and surgical intervention,” Bondi said in her memo.
Gender-affirming genital surgeries are rare for minors, as the World Professional Association for Transgender health and the Endocrine Society do not recommend them for people under the age of 18.
Gender-affirming care for transgender adults and minors is backed by every major medical organization, though not every transgender person decides to medically transition and some do not have the resources to access care.
The Trump administration has taken steps to curtail the ability of people to obtain support for such care after President Trump campaigned on the issue last year.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently pushed for states to not use Medicaid funds for gender-affirming care for minors.
“As a doctor and now CMS Administrator, my top priority is protecting children and upholding the law,” Mehmet Oz, the agency’s head, said in a statement earlier this month.
“Medicaid dollars are not to be used for gender reassignment surgeries or hormone treatments in minors—procedures that can cause permanent, irreversible harm, including sterilization,” he continued. “We have a duty to ensure medical care is lawful, necessary, and truly in the best interests of patients.”
