Washington's Attorney General Leads the Fight for Gender-Affirming Care

Washington State is fighting back, and its Attorney General is taking the battle for gender-affirming care all the way to the federal courts.

Washington State is fighting back, and its Attorney General is taking the battle for gender-affirming care all the way to the federal courts.

Newcastle, WA – While federal executive orders have targeted gender-affirming care, one state has refused to yield. Washington's Attorney General Nick Brown has assembled a sustained legal campaign, emergency injunctions, 22-state coalitions, and federal appellate arguments, that has kept gender-affirming care legal, funded, and accessible in Washington through more than a year of coordinated federal assault.

Why We Write About This

Our frequent coverage of transgender issues is intentional, and we want to be direct about why. It is not favoritism. It is a response to a sustained, coordinated campaign targeting a community that includes our neighbors, our families, and members of our own city. When a government singles out a group and strips away their legal protections, it demands a response from anyone who believes in equal protection under the law.

History offers a clear lesson: the imposition of exclusion and concentrated power does not stop with its first target. The communities that stood silent while others were targeted have often found themselves facing the same machinery later. Our defense of trans rights is, in that sense, a defense of a principle that protects everyone, the principle that no administration can unilaterally decide who deserves legal protection and who does not.

Washington's Attorney General understands this. His record shows it.

February 2025, Injunction Against Federal Funding Cuts

When the Trump administration issued executive orders threatening to withhold federal Medicaid funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care, targeting institutions like Seattle Children's, AG Brown moved immediately. He filed suit and secured a preliminary injunction blocking the orders' enforcement. Gender-affirming care in Washington continued without interruption.

December 24, 2025, A 22-State Coalition Against RFK Jr.'s Declaration

On December 18, 2025, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a declaration attempting to exclude gender-affirming care providers from Medicare and Medicaid programs nationwide, without going through the required notice-and-comment process that federal law demands for rule changes of this magnitude.

Six days later, AG Brown co-led the response. Washington, Oregon, and New York anchored a 22-jurisdiction coalition, joined by California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

The coalition's legal arguments were direct: the declaration violated federal statutes by bypassing required legal procedures, undermined states' constitutional authority to regulate medical practice, and could strip Medicare and Medicaid access from approximately 6,000 Washington healthcare providers, threatening the continuity of care for thousands of transgender patients, including those covered by Apple Health, Washington's Medicaid program.

"The law does not change on one man's whim, and this care remains legal under federal and state law.", AG Nick Brown

March 5, 2026, Ninth Circuit Oral Argument

The federal government appealed the preliminary injunction that Brown had secured in 2025, bringing the case before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. On March 5, 2026, Washington Solicitor General Noah Purcell argued on behalf of Washington, Minnesota, Oregon, Colorado, and three individual physicians representing themselves and their minor patients.

The legal arguments before the court were constitutional in scope: the executive orders violate the Fifth Amendment's equal protection protections by discriminating against transgender individuals, and they violate the separation of powers doctrine by attempting to override congressional appropriations decisions through presidential fiat. The district court had already ruled that plaintiffs would likely prevail on both grounds. The Ninth Circuit case is now pending.

The AG's office committed substantial resources to this fight: 16 attorneys, 13 paralegals, and 5 investigators have worked these cases.

"This administration has attacked transgender Americans with breathtaking cruelty.", AG Nick Brown

Protecting What Washington Has Built

The legal battles above are not abstract, they defend concrete protections that Washington has put in place:

  • Legal access: Gender-affirming care is fully legal in Washington state and is covered under Apple Health, the state's Medicaid program.
  • Shield Law: Washington's Shield Law protects patients, healthcare providers, and anyone who assists them from out-of-state investigations or legal proceedings related to gender-affirming care received in Washington. A patient who travels to Washington for care that is illegal in their home state is protected here.

These protections exist because legislators and advocates built them. The AG's litigation is what keeps them standing when the federal government tries to override them.

An Attack on One Is an Attack on All

If there is any doubt that this fight extends beyond one community, look at the breadth of what the AG's office has been doing in the same weeks:

  • March 16, 2026, Joined a coalition challenging the Trump administration's attack on states' fair housing laws
  • March 11, 2026, Sued the Department of Education over an unlawful demand that colleges and universities turn over student data
  • February 26, 2026, Co-led an amicus brief defending birthright citizenship before the U.S. Supreme Court
  • March 4, 2026, Secured a $5.6 million settlement against O'Reilly Auto Parts for widespread denial of pregnancy and nursing accommodations to Washington workers

The same legal office. The same period. The same principle: that state law protects people when federal power overreaches, and that protection applies across housing, education, immigration, workplace rights, and healthcare.

An exclusionary agenda, when left unchallenged, does not stay narrow. Washington's response has been to challenge it everywhere it appears. That is what principled governance looks like.

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