Attorney General Dana Nessel has issued an open letter to and renewed guidance on Michigan health care providers’ obligation to preserve the right to gender-affirming care in accordance with state law.
The letter and guidance was reissued in the wake of the University of Michigan announcing earlier this week that it would end gender-affirming care after the U.S. Department of Justice issued a subpoena as part of a criminal and civil investigation into the practice.
Many saw the move from University of Michigan as bowing to pressure from the Trump administration.
Nessel’s office noted that Trump has, since taking office, made steps to limit health care options for transgender minors, including through executive orders to halt care, threatening federal funding and subpoenaing health care facilities and providers under the guise of investigating health care practices.
Nessel wrote that the availability of federal funding has no bearing on Michigander’s right to seek and receive services without discrimination.
“Moreover, access to federal funds does not relieve Michigan healthcare facilities and providers of the obligation to comply with Michigan laws, including those that prohibit discrimination against individuals based on their membership in a protected class, such as religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity or expression, or marital status,” Nessel wrote.
“Refusing healthcare 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, may constitute discrimination under Michigan law.”
Nessel called the University of Michigan decision “shameful, dangerous, and potentially illegal.”
“This cowardly acquiescence to political pressure from this president and his administration is not what patients have come to expect from an institution that has labeled itself, ‘the leaders and the best,’ and my department will be considering all of our options if they violate Michigan law,” Nessel said in a statement. “This administration draws most of its power from the willingness of its targets to capitulate without a fight, abandoning their own principles and interests, and throwing disfavored populations under the bus.”
Nessel said that despite repeated successful legal challenges to actions by the Trump administration, the university has chosen instead “to sacrifice the health, well-being, and likely the very lives of Michigan children, to protect itself from the ire of an administration who, oftentimes, engages in unlawful actions itself.”
In a statement, Erin Knott, executive director of Equality Michigan, an LGBTQ+ political advocacy organization, expressed deep gratitude for Nessel and her “unequivocal condemnation” of University of Michigan’s decision.
“We are heartened to see the Attorney General so clearly affirm that discrimination has no place in Michigan’s healthcare system, and that denying medically necessary care to transgender young people is not only wrong – it may also be unlawful,” Knott said. “Her words provide reassurance to trans young people, their families, and the broader LGBTQ+ community that they are not alone, and that Michigan’s laws remain a shield against discrimination.”
Progress Michigan, a progressive political group, called University of Michigan’s move a cave to Trump and a let down to patients in need.
“Patients across the state, trans youth included, rely on health care providers in the Michigan Medicine network,” Sam Inglot, executive director of Progress Michigan, said in a statement.
“Serving those patients should always be the priority – but instead, management has caved to threats from the Trump administration and opted to stop offering safe, effective treatments that their patients need. This is another devastating blow to young trans folks who are already facing numerous attacks on their rights, their safety, and their ability to live authentically.”
Inglot said ceding ground in the hope of being spared from future attacks “has never been an effective way to fight fascism, and this case is no different.”
“The way we prevent that slow creep is by fighting back constantly and consistently and ensuring that not a single inch they gain toward achieving their backward, dystopian agenda comes easily. They are coming for health care today and they will be coming after even more in the days ahead,” Inglot said.
