Complaint filed against UPMC Children's for denying transgender youths gender-affirming care

A complaint filed Tuesday with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission claims UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh’s halt on gender-affirming care for transgender patients younger than 19 constitutes discrimination.

The Women’s Law Project and Philadelphia law firm Berger Montague filed the complaint on behalf of transgender patients and their parents, who allege the hospital stopped providing gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

The same treatments are still being offered to cisgender youth, the Women’s Law Project said in a news release.

“The complaint asserts that UPMC Children’s Hospital’s actions discriminate against transgender patients under the age of 19 based on their sex, which includes gender identity and expression under state law,” Women’s Law Project attorney Elizabeth Lester-Abdalla said.

The complaint — which is sealed and confidential — also alleges discrimination based on disability, as UPMC is denying care to patients diagnosed with gender dysphoria, Lester-Abdalla said.

“We are requesting that UPMC reinstate gender-affirming care for our clients and others similarly situated,” she told TribLive, adding they also are seeking damages for emotional distress and for any costs their clients may incur while seeking health care elsewhere.

If the commission does not take action within a year, attorneys may take the issue to court, Lester-Abdalla said.

According to Women’s Law Project, the anonymous clients include:

• Parents representing their 12-year-old transgender daughter, who began to socially transition at age 5 and whose medical treatment was halted without a referral or additional treatment options
• A mother representing her 15-year-old transgender son, who moved to the Pittsburgh area in part to access treatment for gender dysphoria but whose treatment was abruptly stopped
• An 18-year-old transgender man, whose pharmacological therapy was terminated after more than two years of treatment
• An 18-year-old transgender woman, whose pharmacological therapy was ended and who was denied a referral after more than two years of treatment
• Parents representing their 13-year-old transgender son, whose four-year treatment plan was terminated

UPMC this summer announced it would stop gender-affirming care for people younger than 19, a decision LGBTQ+ advocates and local officials decried.

The decision came after Dr. Mehmet Oz, who heads the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, sent letters to UPMC and other hospitals demanding information concerning hospital policies around gender-affirming care and warning of “significant issues concerning quality standards and specific procedures affecting children at your institution.”

UPMC did not directly address the letter or the complaint.

In a statement Tuesday to TribLive, it reiterated what it has said previously about transgender care for people under 19.

Directives from the federal government under President Donald Trump, UPMC said, “have made it abundantly clear that our clinicians can no longer provide certain types of gender-affirming care without risk of criminal prosecution.”

But Annmarie Pinarski, a staff attorney with the Women’s Law Project, said Pennsylvania law protects care for transgender people and bars discrimination.

“Gender-affirming care is legal in Pennsylvania. Discrimination based on sex and disability status is not,” Pinarski said in a statement. “While federal threats and demands put hospital administrators in a difficult situation, it is not more challenging or important than the distressing experiences our clients, and similarly situated patients, have been forced into after being abruptly denied critical health care.”