Overview:
Local leaders react to Denver Health and Children’s Hospital Colorado ending gender-affirming care and discuss trans rights in 2026.
After pressure from the Trump administration for children’s hospitals in Colorado to halt gender-affirming care services for minors, Denver Health and Children’s Hospital Colorado officially suspended gender-affirming care for patients under 18 years old in January 2026.
“Following the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) announced referral of an investigation against Children’s Hospital Colorado, the hospital must suspend all medical gender-affirming care for patients under 18 years old while we await federal court rulings and assess the rapidly evolving legal landscape,” the hospital said in a statement. Denver Health released a similar message.
“I knew this day would likely come. There’s been a lot of pressure on them for a long time and there was going to be a point where they would be forced to comply because of a funding issue,” said State Representative Brianna Titone. “I don’t necessarily blame them for what’s happening. It’s all because of the Trump Administration. They have an agenda.”
Representative Titone is Colorado’s first publicly transgender elected official. She was first elected in 2018 and is now in her fourth term as a member of the Colorado House of Representatives from the 27th district. Though Titone is term-limited at the statehouse and has announced her candidacy for Colorado State Treasurer, she continues to serve on the technology and finance committees and is committed to protecting transgender people’s medical care and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole, which aligns with the majority of Colorado voters.
“It’s completely against the will of the people. It’s the will of Donald Trump and his people,” Titone said. “They don’t care about the will of the people here in Colorado. It’s about forcing their will on us as a way of exerting power against us. It’s a power and control thing right now.”
Titone has advocated for protections to be put in place for medical providers that provide gender-affirming care because she believes that this medical care is essential for transgender youth. Titone encourages families of transgender youth to now rely on nonprofits in Colorado that provide support services, like The Center on Colfax in Denver.
“We were definitely disappointed, but not surprised,” said Alec Berg, The Center’s communications manager, about Denver Health and Children’s Hospital Colorado decision. “The administration is willing to demagogue and make the boogeyman in this kind of crusade they have against trans people and trans youth. It sends a really, really disappointing message to trans youth who are already at much greater risk of being victims of bullying, of suicide. It sends a message that their lives and their care aren’t valued, which is horrible.”
The Center on Colfax is an LGBTQ+ community center in Denver. The Center opened in 1976 and is now the largest LGBTQ+ community center in the Rocky Mountain Region. The Center offers more than 30 support groups for various factions of the LGBTQ+ community and allies and is responsible for planning and hosting Denver Pride.
“We work with queer and transgender youth every day and we see the importance of just having their identities affirmed by those around them and having access to medical care,” Berg said.
The Trump Administration recently threatened to cut Medicare and Medicaid funding to children’s hospitals unless they suspended gender-affirming care for minors. Trump’s goal of restricting LGBTQ+ rights across the country has been clear since the release of Project 2025 during his campaign, and DEI rollbacks have been visible nationwide since Trump’s election.
“Unfortunately our national political leaders set the tone for the country,” Berg said. “It’s disappointing but not surprising to see how many colleges, universities and corporations have capitulated to the administration’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.”
Conservative legislators and the Republican party have followed Trump’s lead in pushing anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and advocating for stricter laws restricting rights for transgender people and queer people. Former Colorado State Senator Kevin Lundberg founded Protect Kids Colorado in 2024 and currently serves as Chairman of the Board.
“Our general goal or mission is to work on issues that we believe are in the best interest of children in Colorado,” Lundberg said. “And that means not only working with policies that directly involve children, but interfaces with parental authority and making sure the parents have the support of government policies to do what they see is best for their kids.”
Protect Kids Colorado is a parent-led grassroots coalition that advocates for policies that restrict gender-affirming care for minors and LGBTQ+-inclusive education in schools. They argue that such measures are necessary in order to ensure the safety and protection of children. Lundberg rejects the term “gender-affirming care” as accurate for the procedures and care received by transgender minors.
“We call it gender mutilation surgeries or child mutilation surgeries because it’s the removal or the surgical realignment of healthy body parts,” Lundberg said. “It’s just not a good healthy medical practice.”
On the other hand, Berg contends that the driving force behind transgender issues is misinformation, specifically misconceptions about what gender-affirming care is.
“When we’re talking about what has been revoked, we’re talking about puberty blockers, occasionally access to hormones and almost never surgeries,” Berg said. “The number of youth that get access to gender-affirming surgeries is already quite low.”
Gender-affirming care for minors in hospitals primarily consists of puberty blockers, which according to Berg, are reversible.
“Should the individual choose to stop taking the blockers, they will go through puberty in accordance with their assigned sex at birth,” Berg said. “Trans people make up such a small portion of the population, and yet we take up so much of the political discourse and conversation. I think a lot of that is because misinformation just can spread like wildfire.”
As the Trump administration escalates their efforts to restrict gender-affirming care across the country, Colorado has become the latest battleground for the broader debate surrounding transgender rights.
On Tuesday, both hospitals were sued in lawsuit filed in Denver District Court on behalf of multiple families. The plaintiffs in the case are all transgender youth who request the court block the hospital’s suspension of gender-affirming care. The lawsuit argues that ceasing care casues “irreparable, life-altering, and potentially life-threatening harm” to transgender minors.
Protect Kids Colorado is currently gathering signatures for two ballot measures in Colorado that would restrict transgender youth from participating in school sports and accessing gender-affirming surgeries. Lee has until Feb. 20 to get 124,238 signatures from registered voters for each initiative for the measures to be listed on the 2026 ballot.
Moving forward, The Center on Colfax is focused on ensuring that transgender youth are not left high and dry without support services regardless of the current political atmosphere. “Our biggest concern is we know that this care is life-saving and life-affirming, and for youth who can no longer access it, of course, we worry about their mental health and physical well-being and just their ability to grow into thriving queer adults,” Berg said.
“This is not a time to be silent,” Titone adds. “This is the time to pay attention and to act. If we don’t act and we don’t protect the most vulnerable groups at this point, there’s going to be a time when everyone’s going to be sorry that they let that happen because the slippery slope will take everybody down.”
