NEW YORK (AP) — New York Attorney General Letitia James is ordering one of Manhattan’s largest hospitals to resume providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth, weeks after the hospital ended such treatments amid funding threats from the federal government.
In a letter sent to NYU Langone, the attorney general’s office said the hospital’s decision to shutter its Transgender Youth Health Program violated the state’s anti-discrimination laws by “jeopardizing access to medically necessary healthcare for some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers.”
James’ office promised “further action” if the hospital does not immediately resume offering hormone therapies, puberty blockers and other care to transgender youth.
A spokesperson for NYU Langone declined to comment on the letter, which was sent on Feb. 25 but first made public this week.
One of the city’s largest hospital systems, NYU Langone announced last month that it would phase out certain gender-affirming treatments for patients under the age of 19 because of the “current regulatory environment” and recent departure of a medical director.
“We are committed to helping patients in our care manage this change,” the hospital said at the time.
The move came weeks after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a proposal to cut federal Medicaid and Medicare funding to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors, part of a suite of regulatory actions targeting transgender Americans.
The proposals, however, did not officially change federal law, and did not impact a “medical institutions’ existing duties and obligations under New York law,” according to the Feb. 25 letter signed by the attorney general’s health care bureau chief, Darsana Srinivasan.
“The sudden discontinuation of medically necessary transgender healthcare can have severe, negative health outcomes,” Srinivasan added. “Accordingly, the Attorney General is extremely concerned by your institution’s decision to cease the provision of care to this vulnerable, minority population.”
The letter gives NYU Langone until March 11 to demonstrate its compliance.
A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office declined to say what steps it would take if the hospital does not change its policy.
Several hospitals across the country have already paused transgender youth treatments following an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last year that promised to withhold research and education grants to hospitals that allow the “chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”
The move — along with language used in the letter — was roundly condemned by trans groups and major medical associations.
“This sets a very dangerous precedent for all areas of health care, if the government can cherry-pick one area of medicine to use to withhold necessary funding from entire groups of people,” Dr. Scott Leibowitz, a psychiatrist and board member for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, said at the time.
FILE - New York Attorney General Letitia James attends a news conference, Dec. 15, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
WINDER, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia man who gave his teenage son the gun he's accused of using to kill two students and two teachers at a high school was convicted Tuesday of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.
Jurors took less than two hours to find Colin Gray guilty of all charges in the September 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, northeast of Atlanta. Gray now joins a growing number of parents being held responsible in court after their children were accused in shootings.
Colin Gray was found guilty of second-degree murder in the deaths of two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. Georgia law defines second-degree murder as causing the death of a child by committing the crime of cruelty to children. Gray was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the killings of teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.
Another teacher and eight other students were wounded. Gray was also convicted of multiple counts of reckless conduct and cruelty to children.
Gray showed little emotion as the verdict was read and each juror was polled by the judge. Deputies then cuffed his hands behind his back as he stood at the defense table, speaking with his lawyer. He will be sentenced at a later date. Second-degree murder is punishable by at least 10 but no more than 30 years in prison, while involuntary manslaughter carries a penalty of one to 10 years in prison.
Some relatives of victims wept as the verdicts were read. They declined to comment after court. Gray’s defense lawyers left without speaking to reporters.
“We talk a lot about rights in our country,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said after the verdict. “But God gave us a duty to protect our children, and I hope that we remember that, as parents, as community members, to protect our children because that is our God-given duty.”
The teen's mother, Marcee Gray, wasn't charged. She testified that she had urged her estranged husband to take any guns and lock them inside his truck so they would not be accessible to their son. She and Colin Gray were separated in the months leading up to the shooting, and Colt Gray lived mostly with his father during that time. She declined to comment when reached by phone after the verdict.
Prosecutors said Gray gave his son the gun as a Christmas gift and allowed him access to it along with ammunition despite the boy's deteriorating mental health. They said he had “sufficient warning that Colt Gray would harm and endanger” other people.
Fourteen at the time of the shooting, Colt Gray has pleaded not guilty to a total of 55 counts, including murder. A judge has set a status hearing for mid-March.
Investigators said Colt Gray carefully planned the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at the school attended by 1,900 students.
He boarded the school bus with a semiautomatic, assault-style rifle in his book bag, the barrel sticking out and wrapped in poster board, investigators said. He left his second-period class and emerged from a bathroom with the gun and shot people in a classroom and hallways, investigators said.
Colin Gray knew his son was obsessed with school shooters, even having a shrine in his bedroom to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, prosecutors said.
“It wasn’t like one parent missed one warning,” Smith told reporters. “This was multiple warnings over a lengthy period of time and, like we said, you just had to do one thing — take that rifle away and this would have been prevented.”
Jennifer and James Crumbley, the first U.S. parents held criminally responsible for a mass school shooting committed by a child, are serving 10-year prison terms for involuntary manslaughter after their son Ethan killed four students and wounded others in Michigan in 2021.
Colin Gray was the first such parent to be charged in Georgia. Smith said Marcee Gray had seen what happened in Michigan and asked her husband to remove the weapons as a result. “So Michigan was able to move the needle to the point that it almost stopped this tragedy,” he said. “We hope we’ve moved the needle a little further.”
Georgia lawmakers last year passed a school safety bill in response to the shooting. It directs state officials to create an alert system, including the names of students who an investigation has found threatened violence or committed violence at schools.
It also requires law enforcement to notify schools when officers learn a child has threatened death or injury to someone at a school, the implementation of mobile panic alert buttons at schools, quicker transfers of records when students switch schools and mental health coordinators in each of the state’s 180 school districts.
Legislators also approved a request by Gov. Brian Kemp to spend an extra $50 million on school safety.
Associated Press writer Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed reporting.
Colin Gray, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray, is handcuffed and escorted out of the room after jury deliberations at his trial at Barrow County Courthouse in Winder, Ga., Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (Abbey Cutrer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
Colin Gray, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray, reacts after a jury convicted him of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter at Barrow County Courthouse in Winder, Ga., Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (Abbey Cutrer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
Colin Gray, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray, listens during closing arguments in his trial at Barrow County Courthouse in Winder, Ga., on Monday, March 2, 2026. (Abbey Cutrer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colin Gray listens to his attorney during closing arguments in his trial at Barrow County Courthouse in Winder, Ga., on Monday, March 2, 2026. (Abbey Cutrer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colin Gray, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray, takes the stand during his trial on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026 in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Pool)
Colin Gray, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray, listens during his trial, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, at the Barrow County Courthouse in Winder, Ga. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
