City-run clinics, including a new health center opening in Corona, Queens, will soon offer hormone therapy to trans and nonbinary adults, but not to adolescents, according to city health officials.
NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin told members of the City Council at a health budget hearing that the administration is weighing how to expand access to such services for minors, but must strike a balance between providing care to trans youth and avoiding federal backlash.
“We are committed to this issue and want to make sure that we provide the services and resources for youth as well as making sure that we don't expose ourselves to clawbacks from the federal government, which disrupt the rest of the care that we can give,” Martin said.
The city is working to finalize its budget, due at the end of the month, amid escalating efforts by the Trump administration to stop healthcare providers from offering gender-affirming care to minors and to investigate the practices of those that do.
"Every New Yorker deserves access to comprehensive, lifesaving healthcare," Penelope Birnbaum, a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, said in a statement. "The Mamdani administration is committed to protecting that right and ensuring transgender and gender non-conforming New Yorkers can live with dignity, safety, and freedom."
Birnbaum added that Mamdani has directed the city's Law Department to defend gender-affirming care against federal threats.
Mount Sinai Health System and NYU Langone both stopped providing services such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy to pediatric patients earlier this year amid threats of federal funding cuts — though those proposed cuts were never finalized — and both have since been subpoenaed in federal investigations into their services.
Mamdani said on The Brian Lehrer show this month that his $125 billion executive budget includes $15 million for gender-affirming care over the next two years, which he said will go toward services for trans kids.
That’s far less than the $65 million Mamdani pledged to invest in gender-affirming care on the campaign trail — a promise some City Council members and LGBTQ+ advocates are still pressing him to fulfill.
Dawn Gabriel said her 17-year-old trans son has been identifying as a boy since he was a small child and began receiving testosterone from Mount Sinai about two years ago. After Mount Sinai informed her earlier this year that such services would no longer be available to pediatric patients, Gabriel said her son switched to a private clinic instead — but options in the city are narrowing.
Despite Mamdani’s pledge to invest in gender-affirming care for children, Gabriel said she’s worried the administration will end up taking the path of least resistance.
“It's become politically expedient to sidestep care for minors,” Gabriel said.
Major medical associations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists have said interventions such as hormone therapy are valid treatments for gender dysphoria in young people and have called for decisions around that care to be made between families and physicians. But federal officials have argued such “sex-rejecting” services are not based in science and cause children irreversible harm.
Mount Sinai Health System began calling the parents of trans children who had been treated at the hospital network last week to inform them that their medical records could be shared with the Trump administration in response to a federal subpoena, although a spokesperson for Mount Sinai said if it comes to that, the records will be anonymized. NYU Langone has not said whether it will fulfill the Trump administration's request for patient records. A class-action lawsuit has been filed to stop those records from being shared.
Mamdani recently created the first Mayor's Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs and started off Pride Month by launching a campaign to raise awareness about trans New Yorkers’ rights and combat discrimination.
This story was updated with additional comment.
