The Department of Health and Human Services said Friday that it has referred the Seattle Children’s Hospital to its inspector general's office for an investigation into its policies on transgender youth healthcare.

The referral comes after HHS announced last week it was moving to bar hospitals from offering “sex-rejecting procedures on children” as a condition of participating in Medicare and Medicaid, which is in line with President Donald Trump's executive order directing HHS to end the practice. 

The department said the referral is for the hospital's “failure to meet professional recognized standards of health care" as outlined in HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s order last week that claimed transgender treatments expose children to irreversible damage.

The Seattle hospital, which operates a clinic that "provides gender-affirming medical care and support for adolescents whose gender identity is different from their sex at birth," has long been a target of the Trump administration, per The Hill. 

The referral also comes after a group of Democratic states sued the department this week over the order, stating HHS isn’t following legal requirements for policy changes, which include the Administrative Procedure Act and the Medicare and Medicaid statutes.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.