Chicago's Lurie Children's Hospital said Tuesday that it is no longer initiating gender-affirming medical treatment for minors.

"As we await Federal court rulings and assess the rapidly evolving legal landscape, at this time, Lurie Children's will not initiate gender-affirming medications for patients under age 18 who have not previously been treated with these therapies by our team," the hospital said in a statement Tuesday.

The hospital said this comes in response to actions by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including a referral for an investigation of Lurie over the matter last week.

In a post on X on Thursday of last week, HHS General Counsel Mike Stuart identified Lurie as one of six hospitals accused of "failing to protect our children from sex-rejecting procedures."

Stuart wrote that Lurie and the other five hospitals — Nemours Alfred I. DuPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware; Boston Children's Hospital; The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; New York University Langone Health; and Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland, Oregon — had been referred to the HHS Office of Inspector General for investigation over the matter.

"This threatens our ability to care for all of our patients," Lurie said. "We empathize with those who are struggling with this decision and who have shown unwavering dedication to supporting gender-diverse patients. We remain committed to our patients and families and their ability to access expert medical care."

In December, the Trump administration unveiled a series of regulatory actions designed to effectively ban gender-affirming care for minors, building on broader Trump administration restrictions on transgender Americans.

The sweeping proposals include cutting off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children and prohibiting federal Medicaid dollars from being used to fund such procedures.

"This is not medicine, it is malpractice," HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said of gender-affirming procedures on children in a news conference in December. "Sex-rejecting procedures rob children of their futures."

The December announcements marked the most significant moves the administration has taken to restrict the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical interventions for transgender children. They stood to imperil access in nearly two dozen states where drug treatments and surgical procedures remain legal and funded by Medicaid, which includes federal and state dollars.

The proposals run counter to the recommendations of most major U.S. medical organizations. Following the announcement in December, advocates for transgender children strongly refuted the administration's claims about gender-affirming care and said the moves would put lives at risk.

In February 2013, Lurie opened the first gender identity clinic in the Midwest.

Last year, Lurie — along with UIHealth, UChicago Medicine and Rush University Medical Center — stopped offering gender-affirming surgeries to minors in the wake of actions by the Trump administration to withhold funding, but Lurie continued to offer other kinds of gender-affirming care, according to published reports.

Advocate Health Care also cut its gender-affirming care services for minors last year, according to repots.