New Bill Creates Federal Tort for Past Gender Care, Bans Funding for Affiliated Hospitals and Colleges

The “Jamie Reed Protecting Our Kids from Child Abuse Act” is a bill that creates a major new federal liability for medical providers and institutions involved in gender-transition procedures for minors. Essentially, it establishes a new federal path for individuals who received procedures like puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgery before age 18 to sue the clinics, doctors, and even the hospitals or universities that hosted them. The bill also completely cuts off federal funding from any pediatric gender clinic, as well as any college or hospital that hosts, runs, partners with, or funds one of these clinics.

The Retroactive Lawsuit Risk

This bill creates a new federal tort, which is just a fancy way of saying a new type of civil lawsuit. If someone suffers physical or mental health harm from a gender-transition procedure they received as a minor, they can sue the clinic and the practitioner who performed it (Section 2). But here’s the kicker that makes lawyers sit up straight: the bill applies retroactively (Section 4). That means procedures performed years ago, when they were completely legal and standard practice, could now be the basis for a lawsuit filed today. The statute of limitations is extremely long—up to 30 years after the person turns 18—meaning a doctor who treated a 16-year-old patient today could face a lawsuit from that patient when they are 48 years old. This level of retroactive liability is rare and creates immediate, massive legal jeopardy for past medical decisions.

Financial Fallout for Hospitals and Universities

The second major component of this bill is the complete chokehold on federal money (Section 3). If a clinic focuses on gender-related medical care for children, it loses all federal funding. This seems straightforward, but the rule extends far beyond the clinic itself. Any college or hospital that is merely connected to such a clinic—whether by hosting it, running it, or providing funding—is also banned from receiving any federal funds. Think about a major university medical center that receives hundreds of millions in federal grants for cancer research, heart disease, or basic science. If that university is affiliated with a pediatric gender clinic, the entire institution risks losing all that funding. This provision forces major institutions to make an immediate, stark choice: sever all ties with the clinic or risk financial collapse, potentially impacting services and research completely unrelated to gender care.

The Practitioner's Catch-22

For the individual medical practitioner, the bill offers a narrow defense: they can only avoid liability if they can prove they genuinely didn’t know and had no reasonable way of knowing that the patient was a minor at the time of the procedure (Section 2). Given that pediatric clinics are built specifically to treat minors, proving this defense will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, in most cases. This provision, combined with the long statute of limitations and the availability of punitive damages, creates a powerful disincentive for any doctor or clinic to offer this specific type of care, even if they believe it is medically necessary. For minors seeking this care, the practical result of this bill would likely be the immediate closure of existing specialized clinics and a severe reduction in access to care.