Crain’s New York Business – By Amanda D’Ambrosio | April 25, 2025
The City Council passed a slate of bills on Thursday to bolster legal protections for people
seeking gender-arming services.
The legislation comes months after local hospitals – including NYU Langone and Mount
Sinai – abruptly halted care for patients under 19 following an executive order that
threatened to pull federal funding from facilities providing services including puberty
blockers, hormone therapies or gender-arming surgeries to minors.
The sudden cancellations sparked outrage among health care providers and LGBTQ
advocates, who warned that the disruptions sowed fear and undermined the city’s longstanding reputation as a safe haven for gender-arming care.
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One of the new bills, sponsored by Brooklyn Councilwoman Shahana Hanif, shields people
who seek gender-arming care in the city from out-of-state lawsuits by allowing them to
countersue – a right that was previously exclusively held by city agencies. The legislation
marks an attempt to prevent frivolous lawsuits against people who seek gender-arming
services, as well as give patients the ability to defend their right to care, said Diana Adams,
executive director of the Chosen Family Law Center, which supported the legislation.
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