Trans Youth Win Access to Gender-Affirming Care in Colorado Supreme Court Case

Feature image: Protesters with Gender Liberation Movement and ACT UP block the entrance to the Department of Health and Human Services while protesting the Trump administration’s plan to cut federal funding to clinics providing care for transgender youth on February 17, 2026 in Washington, DC. Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images.

Families of transgender youth won a legal victory in Colorado after the state’s Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that Children’s Hospital Colorado should resume gender-affirming care. 

The families had sued the hospital in the case Boe v. Children’s Hospital Colorado after it stopped prescribing hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers for trans youth earlier this year, according to the Colorado Sun. They argued that in doing so for trans patients, but still providing that care to cisgender patients, it amounted to discrimination.

In its ruling, the court found that there is enough evidence that the hospital had violated Colorado’s anti-discrimination law when it suspended the care over federal threats from the Trump administration. The court’s ruling forces the case back to a lower court, recommending that a judge issue an order for the hospital to resume the gender-affirming care. 

In 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting gender-affirming care for trans youth, which led the hospital to pause it. However, the order was blocked by a court, and the hospital resumed the care. The Department of Justice then targeted the hospital with a subpoena related to the prescriptions given for gender-affirming care, according to Colorado Public Radio. The hospital is currently fighting against that order. 

Then, the Department of Health and Human Services also began investigating the hospital over its gender-affirming care after Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared gender-affirming care unsafe and that hospitals that provided it would face negative consequences. After that investigation began, CPR reports, the hospital stopped treatments, fearing it would be kicked out of the Medicaid system, which it relies on financially.

Major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for trans youth. 

Justice William W. Hood III said in the majority opinion that the “actual immediate and irreparable harm” to the trans patients is more than what the hospital could encounter “if the federal government further acts against it,” according to CPR.

The two dissenting justices said that the hospital acted not because of discrimination but to protect itself from financial ruin. 

Paula Greisen, an attorney for the families, said, “This is a landmark ruling.” Greisen added the case “reaffirms that states are going to have the right to enforce their own anti-discrimination laws, even when we might have a federal government or a powerful entity that wants to circumvent those laws or wants to attack a vulnerable community.”

She said that the families weren’t frustrated with the hospital, but with the Trump administration for its attacks on gender-affirming care for trans youth. 

“There are no bad actors in this trial. The villain here is the federal government attacking the hospitals and threatening hospitals to take away their funding. The hospital, these medical providers are angels,” she said.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat running for governor, welcomed the ruling, saying “Colorado families are finally going to get relief after months of uncertainty,” and called on Children’s not to delay resuming care.

“Children’s Hospital Colorado is reviewing the court’s ruling and assessing our next steps. While we do not have updates to share at this time, we will provide guidance in the near future,” the hospital told CPR in an email.