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Sharif Jacob, a partner at Keker, Van Nest & Peters who is representing the plaintiffs, said the executive order is "an alarming example of presidential overreach."  Key Arguments in the Lawsuit
Military families of transgender youth and young adults sued the U.S. Department of Defense this week in Maryland federal court over an executive order barring military hospitals and the military insurance plan from providing gender-affirming health care to service members' children. Keker, Van Nest & Peters, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law), National Center for LGBTQ Rights and Brown Goldstein & Levy filed the suit, captioned Doe v. Department of Defense, on behalf of anonymous Armed Forces members on Sept. 8 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. The case accuses the Department of Defense and its co-defendants, including the Defense Health Agency, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Defense Health Agency Acting Director David Smith, of violating the Administrative Procedure Act and the constitutional separation of powers "as part of a broad effort to strip equal rights from transgender people." According to the complaint, TRICARE, the Defense Department's health benefits program, has covered "medically necessary" gender transition medications, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, to treat gender dysphoria in transgender patients for "nearly a decade." On Jan. 28, the Donald Trump administration issued an executive order titled "Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation," which contains a provision that "[excludes] chemical and surgical mutilation of children from TRICARE coverage and [amends] the TRICARE provider handbook to exclude chemical and surgical mutilation of children." The order is one of a slate of executive actions aimed at restricting access to transgender health care nationwide. In March, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced that it planned to "phase out medical treatments for gender dysphoria" in order to comply with another executive order asserting that “[it] is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” In May, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Trump to enforce a ban on transgender people serving openly in the military. Trump had announced a ban on transgender service members during his previous administration in 2017, citing "extreme medical costs." According to a February report by The New York Times, the U.S. military has spent $52 million—a fraction of the Defense Department's $17 billion annual health agency budget—on transgender healthcare since 2015. The complaint contends that the reversal of policy is part of a discriminatory campaign against transgender civil rights undertaken by the Trump administration since Jan. 20, including actions such as removing references to transgender people from federal government websites, rescinding government funding for a transgender youth suicide hotline and enforcing executive orders that "seek to eliminate equality for transgender people in multiple arenas—including housing, social services, schools, sports, health care, employment, international travel, and military service." The order, the complaint said, is "an immediate and devastating disruption of essential health care that affects the physical and psychological well-being of Plaintiffs and other young people throughout the country." The plaintiffs cited multiple cases in which the transgender adolescent and young adult children of service members and their families reported experiencing "increased anxiety" and "unnecessary stress" as a result of losing coverage and being forced to pay out-of-pocket for expensive gender dysphoria treatments. "People who were getting gender transition care, all of a sudden, could no longer get it," said Sharif Jacob, a Keker partner who is representing plaintiffs in the case, in an interview. "People who were getting medications could no longer get them. The families in this case were suddenly told that the military treatment facilities were no longer allowed to provide the treatment that had helped their children thrive, including routine lab tests that monitor their medications, and that their military health insurance no longer covered the cost of their care. So they're deeply worried as any parent would be, because they know stopping treatment will endanger their children's health." A Pentagon official reached by email said that as a matter of policy, the Department of Defense does not comment on ongoing litigation. Jacob said that though there are other cases targeting the suite of Trump's executive orders limiting health care coverage for transgender people, Doe v. Department of Defense is the only suit challenging TRICARE's refusal to provide coverage for this care. "I think that this case is an alarming example of presidential overreach and targeting a vulnerable minority," said Jacob. "The Trump administration has repeatedly expressed hostile views towards transgender people, targeting them with derogatory language and policies that seek to deny them legal recognition and restrict access to medically necessary healthcare.
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