The judge’s temporary restraining order is a setback for Trump’s efforts to roll back transgender rights and services.

A United States federal judge has temporarily blocked an executive order from President Donald Trump that curtailed access to gender transition care for people younger than 19.

Thursday’s ruling by District Judge Brendan Hurson stems from a lawsuit brought by the families of transgender teenagers and watchdog groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

In his decision, Hurson said that the executive order, which refers to gender-affirming healthcare as “chemical and surgical mutilation of children”, seems to “deny that this population even exists, or deserves to exist”.

The ruling represents the latest blow to Trump’s agenda in the courts, where the legality of many of his measures has been met with scepticism.

Trump’s order, issued on January 27, pledged to rigorously enforce laws to “prohibit or limit” what were termed as “destructive and life-altering procedures”, including the use of puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries for those transitioning.

It also called on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to halt federal funds that may go to covering gender-affirming care or related research.

The ACLU and Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ civil rights group, represented the families involved in the ongoing lawsuit. They said their clients saw hospital services stop as a result of Trump’s order.

“Good and decent parents of transgender kids should never be in the frightening position of having their child’s prescribed, medically necessary care canceled at the whim and threat of a politician,” Brian K Bond, the chief executive officer of the LGBTQ advocacy group PFLAG, said in a news release.

A coalition of 13 state attorneys general, including New York’s Letitia James, also called on healthcare providers to continue providing necessary services to transgender youth, calling Trump’s order discriminatory.

“The Trump administration’s recent Executive Order is wrong on the science and the law,” a statement from the attorneys general said.

While transitioning is a lengthy and deliberate process that requires input and evaluation by professionals, Trump’s order characterised such steps as “maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex”.

Republican politicians have heightened their attacks on transgender rights and services in recent years, often employing rhetoric that questions the legitimacy of transgender identity in general.

Trump himself signed a separate executive order on the first day of his second term saying his government would only “recognize two sexes, male and female” – and denying the concept of a “gender identity”.

He has also proceeded to threaten to withhold funds from schools that would allow transgender women and girls to participate in female sporting events.

Such restrictions are not limited to transgender youth, either. In another executive order taking aim at transgender members of the military, Trump said that “a man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member”.

Less than 2 percent of the US population identifies as transgender or nonbinary, but the small population has become the target of persistent ire from conservative politicians and figures.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies