- The claim that U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice extorted Connecticut Children’s Medical Center to force it into ending gender-affirming care for minors is still under investigation.
- The rumor stems from several news reports that said the medical center committed to ending gender-affirming care and to setting aside $500,000 to
“provide care for individuals who say they were harmed by gender-affirming care they previously received.” - It is true the DOJ applied legal pressure that led the Connecticut hospital to settle, based on a statement on the DOJ website. Whether it constitutes extortion is debatable. The statement says Connecticut Children’s “remained cooperative, proactive, and solution-driven” during the DOJ investigation.
- Snopes could not identify any legal basis for the DOJ investigation. A DOJ spokesperson said the investigation was consistent with an April 2025 department memo to investigate potential violations of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and False Claims Act.
- In 2025, the American Academy of Pediatrics said that restrictions to gender-affirming care for children are not rooted in science.
- We will update this report if and when additional information surfaces. We have also reached out to the hospital and are waiting for a response.
A rumor spread online in August 2026 that U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice extorted Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford,
For example, one Facebook post said the tactics the DOJ employed amounted to extortion (archived). The post read: “Trump’s DOJ just EXTORTED a children’s hospital. Dump your trans patients, pay up $500K, and we’ll disappear. It worked.”
The Justice Department never named a law the hospital broke. There was no charge, no trial, and no finding of liability. The hospital denies any wrongdoing. It signed anyway, and it paid anyway.
The DOJ has been subpoenaing doctors and clinics that treat trans kids since last summer, more than 20 subpoenas at a time, then offering hospitals a way out: end the care, write the check, and the investigations stop. Texas Children’s Hospital took the deal. The Cleveland Clinic took the deal. Connecticut Children’s is number three, and more than 40 medical centers across the country have now pulled back care for trans youth.
An X user made a similar claim (archived), saying the settlement was the result of “an aggressive federal campaign against providers of pediatric gender-transition care, including DOJ subpoenas and investigations.”
The social media posts appeared to extrapolate the claim from several news media reports, including one in Them, an outlet that covers LGBTQ+ issues, and another in local news publication the Hartford Courant.
While it is true the DOJ applied legal pressure on the hospital via an investigation and at least one
Snopes contacted the DOJ to ask which laws, if any, Connecticut Children’s had broken. A spokesperson replied, saying, “the investigation was consistent with the April 2025 [then-U.S.] Attorney General [Pam Bondi] memo to investigate potential violations of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and False Claims Act.”
We replied to ask if the DOJ alleged Connecticut Children’s had committed any such potential violation. We had not received a response as of this writing.
In July 2025, the DOJ said it had “sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics involved in performing transgender medical procedures on children.”
The announcement said the agency would be investigating “healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.”
Snopes also contacted Connecticut Children’s Medical Center to ask for more details on what led the hospital to end gender-affirming care. We will update this report if we receive a response.
On Aug. 5, 2026, the DOJ announced (archived) Connecticut Children’s had agreed to “end pediatric ‘gender-affirming care'” and to set aside “$500,000 in medical care for individuals living with the harmful consequences of” such care. Further, the hospital agreed to pay a “monetary penalty” as part of the agreement, the DOJ said.
Gender-affirming care includes “administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to and performing surgeries on children and adolescents,” per the DOJ’s statement. The statement does not cite any federal law the hospital may have broken.
The statement says Connecticut Children’s “remained cooperative, proactive, and solution-driven” during the DOJ investigation.
The announcement also says two other hospitals, Texas Children’s Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, had also reached such agreements.
The agreement between the DOJ and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation said the DOJ alleged that the medical center had submitted claims for payment that “used diagnosis codes that failed to appropriately reflect that the items and services for which claims were submitted were provided for the purpose of Sex-Rejecting Procedures.”
The DOJ provided no such details about their investigation of Connecticut Children’s.
“While we can be grateful when we arrive at such positive resolutions, we cannot and will not rest in our pursuit of justice for the victims of these discredited practices,” the statement quotes Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Brett Shumate as saying.
Experts say the interventions that occur during gender-affirming care for children are not “discredited practices,” contrary to Shumate’s assertion. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the United States’ largest professional association of pediatricians, said in 2025 that restrictions to such care constitute a “
