OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
3:00 PM – Wednesday, February 18, 2026
New York University (NYU) Langone Health has officially shuttered its “Transgender Youth Health Program,” ending access to hormone therapies, puberty blockers, and surgical interventions for minors.
The closure is a direct result of the escalating standoff between the hospital and the Trump administration, which has threatened to revoke federal funding for institutions providing these services to those under 18.
While NYU is the broader university, NYU Langone Health is their specialized healthcare network and Medical College.
In a Tuesday statement, NYU Langone spokesperson Steve Ritea cited a combination of staffing changes and the legal climate for the program’s dissolution.
“Given the recent departure of our medical director, coupled with the current regulatory environment, we made the difficult decision to discontinue our Transgender Youth Health Program,” Ritea said.
The program, part of Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone, previously offered:
- “Gender-affirming” medication, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy (such as masculinizing or feminizing hormones like testosterone or estrogen), and related interventions for children.
- “Gender-affirming” surgeries, primarily for older adolescents in “well-evaluated” cases.
According to NYU Langone Health’s official website, the hospital claims to “help children and their families understand and explore their identity, with the goal of helping them achieving a true and nuanced sense of self. We want children to understand and value themselves, so that they can develop the confidence to talk with others about their sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Representatives from the hospital also claim that prior to the changes, their youth program had primarily focused on pharmaceuticals, rather than surgery. Adult “transgender care,” including hormone therapy and surgeries, continues unaffected through NYU Langone’s broader Transgender Health services, they added.
The closure follows months of mounting pressure from Washington, D.C.
Since resuming office, President Donald Trump has issued a key executive order (EO) and proposed regulations aimed at medical facilities that provide “impressionable” minors with hormone therapies and surgical procedures.
“Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end,” Trump’s EO “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation“ states.
Most recently, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also proposed rules that would strip Medicare and Medicaid funding from any hospital providing puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or surgeries to those under 18.
While the hospital noted that its pediatric mental health services will remain operational, the medical side of the program — which handled prescriptions for puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) — is finished.
The stakes for NYU Langone are massive. In the 2023 fiscal year, the hospital system received over $600 million in federal grants.
The administration’s EO effectively presented large medical centers with a choice: continue providing care to a small population of gender dysphoric youth or risk the federal funding that supports the vast majority of their operations.
Democrat Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal criticized the announced move last year, calling it a “result of relentless brow-beating” by the Department of Justice (DOJ). He also publicly condemned the hospital’s decision as “cowardly” and “disturbing,” arguing that the institution was capitulating to federal pressure and violating New York’s anti-discrimination laws.
“The federal government has put hospitals in a Hobson’s choice,” Hoylman-Sigal said. “They are literally pulling the rug out from patients and their families.”
NYU Langone is not alone in its retreat, as a growing number of medical institutions are similarly scaling back their pediatric “transgender services.”
Hospitals such as Children’s National in D.C. and Children’s Hospital Colorado have paused or halted their controversial “gender-affirming” medical treatments for minors, with many others quietly scrubbing references to these programs from their websites as well.
This nationwide shift follows a significant move by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to align federal healthcare policy with the administration’s focus on child safety.
Under proposed rules that closed for public comment on Tuesday, the Trump administration reiterated that it aims to protect kids and taxpayer funds by making Medicare and Medicaid participation contingent on hospitals ceasing “sex-rejecting procedures” for minors — treatments that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has characterized as harmful and unproven.
- Mount Sinai – NYC: Reported to have canceled some youth “gender-affirming” appointments.
- New York-Presbyterian: Removed descriptive language regarding minor-specific gender care from its digital platforms.
- Children’s National – D.C.: Among several hospitals outside of New York currently reassessing their programs under federal pressure.
The most recent closure has sparked significant controversy in Albany, a staunchly liberal stronghold that has long championed access to these treatments and surgeries for minors — even in cases where critics argue that the child’s brain is not yet fully developed or that gender dysphoria may resolve over time.
“The last part of the brain to mature is the part that makes us human: the prefrontal cortex. It controls complex thinking, decision-making, impulse control, and personality. The neurons in the prefrontal cortex are present at birth, but they aren’t fully myelinated and connected until around the age of 25,” GoodRX reported.
New York Attorney General Letitia James previously warned hospitals that denying care based on gender identity could violate state anti-discrimination laws and the state’s Equal Rights Amendment.
“Electing to refuse services to a class of individuals based on their protected status … is discrimination under New York law,” James stated in a warning letter to providers.
Nonetheless, despite these state-level protections, the threat of losing federal Medicare and Medicaid status — a death knell for any major hospital — has proven to be a more immediate concern for hospital boards than potential state-level litigation.
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