Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has led a coalition of 24 states in urging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to permanently end federal funding for sex-change procedures on children under Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The group sent a letter to Secretary Kennedy, commenting on two proposed rules that would restrict federal subsidies for such medical interventions for minors.
“Medicaid and Medicare should never have been allowed to use taxpayer dollars to fund radical and dangerous sex-change procedures for children. We support the Trump administration’s proposal to reverse course,” said Attorney General Marshall. “We know the dangers of these procedures firsthand. Through years of litigation defending Alabama’s law, we uncovered a political and medical scandal involving the leading medical guidelines that recommend using sterilizing hormones and surgeries to ‘treat’ children suffering from gender dysphoria. The guidelines were built on ideology and politics, not science, and have led to untold harm to children and their parents. Children deserve better, and the first step in helping them is to stop funding the harm.”
The letter references evidence gathered during litigation related to the “Standards of Care 8” (SOC-8) published by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). According to the coalition, SOC-8 was used by WPATH for political purposes, altered treatment recommendations based on political considerations rather than established practices, delayed systematic reviews evaluating safety and effectiveness of these procedures for minors, and classified castration as “medically necessary” for certain individuals.
Attorneys general from Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming joined Marshall in signing the letter.
The Alabama Attorney General’s office serves as the state’s chief law enforcement agency within the executive branch. It represents Alabama in legal matters statewide—including offering legal opinions and prosecuting crimes—while focusing on public safety initiatives such as reducing violent crime. The office also works with other agencies on issues like consumer protection and environmental enforcement according to its official website. Steve Marshall has served as Alabama’s forty-eighth attorney general since February 2017 (source).