President Donald Trump has defied a federal judge’s order and added transphobic disclaimers to recently restored webpages from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
However, Trump’s administration has defied the order by not restoring the pages to how they appeared before their removal. Rather, the following disclaimer has been added to any pages that mention “gender”:
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Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website as of February 14, 2025 at 11:59 p.m. Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate, and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it.
This disclaimer appears on a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration webpage linking to a survey on behavioral health and substance abuse among LGBTQ+ youth, Jezebel noted. It also appears on the FDA’s June 2024 “guidance document” for “Diversity Action Plans to Improve Enrollment of Participants from Underrepresented Populations in Clinical Studies” and a January 2025 guidance document for the “Study of Sex Differences in the Clinical Evaluation of Medical Products.”
Every web page ordered restored by the court that features anything related to gender now contains this notice.
While Trump and Republicans have repeatedly referred to gender-affirming care as “chemical and surgical mutilation,” the medications used in such care have been used for decades on cisgender children, and gender-affirming surgeries are almost never conducted on youth. Lastly, cis men and sexist discrimination harm women far more than the mere existence of trans people.
This isn’t the first court order that Trump has defied during his second presidency. Earlier this month, the Trump administration didn’t comply with federal court orders directing him to unfreeze billions of dollars in federal aid he paused in his quest to end “wasteful” spending and to reinstate numerous federal employees who Trump terminated or placed on administrative leave.
If Trump continues to defy court orders, courts can issue civil and criminal penalties for contempt against government agencies, officials, and civil servants who ignore the court orders and also sanction attorneys for helping their clients deliberately defy them, the Brennan Center for Justice reports.
While the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is also tasked with enforcing court orders, it’s unlikely that Trump’s DOJ will punish him for defying court orders. As such, judges can also appoint private attorneys to prosecute criminal contempt charges in rare instances when the U.S. attorney declines to accept the case, the Brennan Center added.
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