Dear Attorney General Bonta: Thank You for Suing Rady Children’s Hospital
Rainbow Families Action is immensely grateful and moved that California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a lawsuit against Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego for illegally ending its gender-affirming care for minors. The AG’s office has finally taken the stand for which we’ve been begging for months and months: To state that our children are full citizens of California and entitled to the same rights and protections as any other Californian.
As the press release explains, “Rady flagrantly disregarded its legal obligations by unilaterally deciding to preemptively comply with the Administration’s demands and cease medically necessary care for roughly 1,450 patients.”
The lawsuit is extremely important both on a legal level and an emotional level, because it tells our families that our children matter. They are not pawns to be sacrificed in political games. Hospitals that turn them away are breaking the law — and like anyone else who breaks the law and hurts a child, they will face consequences.
The lawsuit focuses primarily on how Rady’s decision to end care violates legally binding conditions placed by the AG on Rady’s merger with Children’s Hospital of Orange County and its affiliates, and only secondarily on how this decision violates California law. Other healthcare systems have ceased offering care to transgender youth without any action from the AG’s office. We wish Attorney General Bonta had sued Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles in July 2025 when CHLA stopped offering care. We wish they had been there when Stanford stopped offering gender-affirming surgical procedures and when Kaiser stopped surgeries.
But we will take any support we can get at this dark moment in time for trans kids. We are very grateful to have Attorney General Bonta fighting by our side.
San Diego families with trans kids and their allies march in January 2026 to tell Rady not to end life-saving care.
Photos by @gcastellanos1291 and @adventuryn_photography