Connecticut hospitals sued after cutting off transgender youths' access to care, despite state protectionshttps://www.advocate.com/news/connecticut-hospitals-transgender-care-lawsuit 🔗Christopher Wiggins (17 Dec 2025)
On Wednesday, attorneys with GLAD Law filed civil rights complaints against Yale New Haven Health and Connecticut Children's Medical Center, accusing the hospital systems in New England of unlawfully cutting off gender-affirming medical care for transgender patients under 19, even though Connecticut law explicitly protects access to that care.
The filings with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities argue that the hospitals discriminated against transgender patients by terminating medically necessary treatment while continuing to provide the same medications to non-transgender youth. For the families involved, the legal action formalizes a rupture that began months earlier, when the care they relied on disappeared almost overnight.
"These two institutions abruptly stopped providing transgender medical care for patients under 19, which left families scrambling for a new place to get the care they need," Hannah Hussey, a staff attorney at GLAD Law working on the cases, told The Advocate in an interview.
Connecticut has not banned gender-affirming care for minors. No state or federal law required the hospitals to stop. Just weeks earlier, the governor had signed legislation reaffirming the state's prohibition on discrimination in health care.
"That's a really important point here," Hussey said. "There was no federal, there was no state policy requiring the hospitals to shut off this care. And to the contrary, Connecticut has strong non-discrimination laws that protect access to health care for transgender people."
The complaints are filed on behalf of 10 individuals, including parents of transgender children and an 18-year-old transgender man.
