Suing Trump Isn't Enough: Blue State AGs Must Enforce State Laws Protecting Trans People

Private entities overcomplying with Trump executive orders and targeting transgender people must not be given free passes to do so by blue states.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

In recent months, President Trump has issued a slew of executive orders, investigatory threats, and funding cuts targeting any institution with inclusive policies for transgender people. These actions are part of a broader campaign to pressure organizations and companies into aligning with the administration’s anti-transgender agenda. Faced with these threats, a growing number of institutions—including private colleges, hospitals, and other essential services—are choosing to comply rather than fight for their transgender students, patients, and constituents. If this trend continues, compliance through cowardice will become the primary vehicle for rolling back transgender rights not just in red states, but nationwide. State attorneys general must act now to enforce state-level nondiscrimination laws—or risk letting federal intimidation dictate policy even in places where protections still exist.

We’ve already seen plenty of over-compliance. One executive order threatens to wield the federal female-genital-mutilation statute against gender-affirming health care—even though that law clearly does not apply to medical procedures. Another menace: yanking Medicaid dollars from hospitals that treat transgender patients. Trump cannot do this unilaterally; any such move would trigger litigation the hospitals would almost certainly win. But lawsuits are expensive, so many systems decide they’d rather cave than spend money defending their patients’ rights. That compliance carries a steep cost: hospitals have far greater resources than individual trans people and are better positioned to win precedent-setting cases affecting large numbers of patients. When they refuse to fight, the burden—and the harm—falls on those with the least power.

Another example of this capitulation comes from American universities. In recent weeks, multiple institutions have quietly negotiated transgender people’s rights away in exchange for restored federal funding. The University of Pennsylvania, for instance, announced it would impose a sports ban and retroactively vacate swimmer Lia Thomas’s wins—despite the fact that Pennsylvania has no such ban, and the state’s Human Relations Act guidance explicitly protects gender identity. At Brown University, administrators agreed to ban transgender students from using bathrooms aligned with their gender, a condition reportedly tied to regaining federal support withdrawn under the Trump administration. If implemented, Brown would become the first major university in a blue state to enact a bathroom ban. This, despite the fact that Rhode Island law clearly includes gender identity as a protected class.

Recently, State Attorneys General sued the Trump administration over many of these threats. “Since taking office on January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump and his administration have relentlessly, cruelly, and unlawfully targeted transgender individuals,” the complaint reads. “The result is an atmosphere of fear and intimidation experienced by transgender individuals, their families and caregivers, and the medical professionals who seek only to provide necessary, lawful care to their patients.” This is a great first step, but it is not enough.

It may be politically easier for state attorneys general to file lawsuits against the Trump administration—even knowing that a deeply conservative Supreme Court is likely to side with the president. But the more critical, and perhaps more difficult, task lies in enforcing state laws against institutions that cave to Trump’s threats despite no federal law requiring them to do so. These threats, often little more than bluster or executive pressure campaigns, are not binding. And yet, too many institutions—colleges, hospitals, nonprofits—are treating them as mandates. If these organizations won’t stand up for their transgender constituents on their own, then state governments must compel them to do so. Without such enforcement, the slow erosion of rights will continue—not by law, but by surrender.

To date, however, state attorneys general have largely failed to act. Only a couple, such as New York Attorney General Letitia James, have even hinted at enforcing state law against institutions that drop transgender care. In a letter sent to hospitals dropping such services, she wrote, “Regardless of the availability of federal funding… Electing to refuse services to a class of individuals based on their protected status, such as withholding the availability of services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity or their diagnosis of gender dysphoria, while offering such services to cisgender individuals, is discrimination under New York law.” It was a promising start. But so far, the letter appears to have gone unheeded. Several hospitals in New York have still moved forward with cutting care, leaving patients without options and the state’s legal protections unenforced.

Unless institutions are held to account under state law, they will continue to treat compliance with Trump’s anti-transgender agenda as the path of least resistance. If Attorneys General choose to look the other way, they are functionally allowing the President to override state protections without a fight. AGs have proven they can take on Trump when his actions threaten their states—now they must show the same resolve when organizations within the state target transgender people to get his favor. Preemptive compliance is cowardice, and it’s time state leaders make clear that discrimination will not be tolerated, no matter who demands it from Washington.