RFK Jr. Announces New HHS Guidance Recognizing Only Two Sexes

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration had adopted a set of official government “sex-based definitions” to give the public and federal agencies precise terms with which to describe categories including “male,” “female,” “woman” and “man.”

The definitions are listed in a one-page “guidance” that is aimed, in part, at keeping transgender women and girls out of female sports, discouraging gender-affirming care for young people and fulfilling President Trump’s pledge that the federal government will recognize only two sexes: male and female.

“This administration is bringing back common sense and restoring biological truth to the federal government,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement. “The prior administration’s policy of trying to engineer gender ideology into every aspect of public life is over.”

A male is defined under the guidance as “a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.” A female is “a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova).”

But many medical experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, recognize that not everyone fits into neat categories of male and female. Some individuals are intersex and have sexual anatomy or chromosomes that do not fit typical definitions of male and female.

Some children do not identify with either gender, or identify with a gender that does not correspond to their biological sex. The Academy has published its own set of definitions that include transgender youth, described as “a subset of gender-diverse youth whose gender identity does not match their assigned sex.”

As part of the Trump administration initiative, the Health and Human Services Department has launched a new web page for the federal Office on Women’s Health, whose portfolio includes reproductive health, maternal and behavioral health for women.

The new page, entitled “Protecting Women and Children,” features a video with Riley Gaines, the conservative activist and former University of Kentucky all-American swimmer who says she was put at a competitive disadvantage when competing against a transgender woman.

The page links to the guidance and the definitions. “Recognizing the immutable and biological nature of sex is essential to ensure the protection of women’s health, safety, private spaces, sports and opportunities,” the guidance states, adding that the move was “critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.”

Mr. Kennedy’s announcement was in response to an executive order Mr. Trump issued on Jan. 20 that gave the health department 30 days to issue “clear guidance” to the public on how to interpret sex-based definitions.

On Tuesday, Mr. Kennedy delivered a welcome address to department employees in which he said his agency would work toward helping Americans “discover our own paths to living our fullest lives, unleashing the potential in every one of us to make good personal choices that allow us to nourish, to heal and to develop ourselves.”

On Wednesday, opponents of the Trump administration and Mr. Kennedy rallied outside the offices of the Department of Health and Human Services to protest job cuts that have rid the department and its agencies of thousands of workers, including up-and-coming young scientists.

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Kennedy, who once counted himself a Democrat, did not make rolling back transgender rights a central part of his political persona. He once said it was not among “the issues that really matter to you, to me, to our children.”

But he has also made clear he would follow Mr. Trump’s lead. He has said he favors a ban on gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for minors. He has also made unsubstantiated claims, based on a study in frogs, that the chemical atrazine in drinking water is causing sexual dysphoria in children.

Advocates for transgender rights called Mr. Kennedy’s nomination for health secretary “particularly alarming.” In a statement opposing his confirmation, Sinead Murano-Kinney of the group Advocates for Trans Equality called Mr. Kennedy “a conspiratorial figurehead, a yes-man, enabling the worst impulses of a president with a clear agenda to remove trans people from participating in public life.”

Conservatives cheered Wednesday’s announcement. “It took many years of effort but we are finally back to science and common sense,” Roger Severino, who wrote the health section of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for overhauling the federal government, said on social media.

There are roughly 1.6 million youths and adults in the United States who identify as transgender, according to an estimate by the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law. Mr. Trump’s predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., made protecting transgender people a cornerstone of federal policy.

Mr. Biden’s assistant secretary for health, Dr. Rachel Levine, a pediatrician, made history by becoming the first transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate to a federal position.

Mr. Trump has rapidly reversed Biden administration policies. He has followed up his Jan. 20 executive order with a string of others aimed at stripping away the rights of transgender people in almost every corner of American life — including schools, hospitals, prisons, the military and housing.

Critics have objected not only to the substance of the orders, but to their harsh language. The order barring taxpayer dollars from financing medical interventions for transgender children is headlined “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”

Government agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is under the health department, were ordered to delete any language mentioning “gender ideology” from their websites. A judge has since ordered the C.D.C.’s page restored. Some are still down.

Other sites — including the C.D.C.’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System — now carry a disclaimer.

“This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the administration and this department rejects it,” the disclaimer says, adding that the information presented is “extremely inaccurate.”