Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is taking legal action against transgender activist physicians who prescribed transition medications to minors after state law forbade the practice.
Paxton filed lawsuits, the first of their kind, against three doctors between October 17 and November 4, for allegedly treating children with gender transition drugs after the practice was banned under state law. The civil suits are asking for an immediate injunction against the doctors to stop their unlawful practices and deceptively mislead pharmacies and insurance payers. The suit also calls for a $10,000 fine per violation.
The doctors are May Lau, M.D., a pediatrician and professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Hector Granados, M.D., a pediatric endocrinologist; and M. Brett Cooper, M.D., a physician at UT Southwestern.
Physicians “who continue to provide these harmful ‘gender transition’ drugs and treatments will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” stated Paxton in an October 17 press release.
Don’t Mess with Texas
Signed into law in June 2023 by Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas Senate Bill 14 bars procedures and treatments of minors for gender transitioning, reassignment, or dysphoria.
Upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2024, the law specifically outlaws surgeries, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones for “transition treatment” with few exceptions.
The law cites a growing body of data indicating these treatments are largely ineffective and in fact, damaging over time. Texas doctors who disobey the law face license revocation and authority to practice medicine in the state in addition to civil fines.
Falsified Records
SB14 gives the Texas Medical Board the authority to revoke the license of physicians who have violated “prohibited acts regarding gender transitioning or gender reassignment procedures and treatments on certain children.” Currently, the three physicians named in Paxton’s suits still retain authority to practice in the state.
Additionally, prescribing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones no matter how they are billed, or whether they are prescribed as off-label, also violates the law.
The lawsuits allege Lau, Granados, and Cooper falsified medical records, prescriptions, and billing records to “intentionally conceal the unlawful conduct” to avoid responsibility under state law and collect fees from insurance companies for illegal treatments.
Medical Board Discretion
SB14 gives the Texas Medical Board the authority to revoke the license of physicians who have violated “prohibited acts regarding gender transitioning or gender reassignment procedures and treatments on certain children.” Currently, the three physicians named in Paxton’s suits still retain authority to practice in the state.
“Many of the medical boards, as well as medical schools, have been largely taken over by progressive doctors who see providing gender-affirming care as a civil-rights issue,” said Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation who serves on the Texas Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
“What steps medical boards will take, if they don’t want to do anything, is assign a committee to investigate and then subtly encourage the committee to slow-walk its investigation so that nothing gets done quickly, and perhaps the issue will go away,” said Matthews.
Activist Medical Boards
The bias of professional medical boards, which can revoke board certification and influence state boards is no secret, says Jill Simons, M.D., the executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, an alternate group to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which supports gender transition treatments on children.
“I talk to pediatricians all the time, and I know that the majority of the pediatricians in the AAP do not go along with this,” said Simons. “It is the leaders, some of them not even physicians, who are following these political agendas.”
State licensing board authority varies by state, says Simons.
“Some medical boards have jurisdiction to revoke someone’s medical license, but in other cases, medical providers are subject to malpractice lawsuits,” said Simons.
State medical boards came under fire for bias during the COVID-19.
Insurance Enforcers
If the suits continue, it is possible malpractice insurance companies would refuse to cover these doctors, especially if juries award large amounts to plaintiffs hurt by transition treatment, says Matthews.
“I believe that civil lawsuits, filed by people who were minors at the time of the gender-affirming care, will be the most effective way to stop these practices,” said Matthews. “When individuals who underwent the care as minors explain to juries the lifelong medical challenges they now face and how they believe they and their parents were snookered into transitioning, those juries will be delivering hefty awards.
“For transgender care centers and physicians, those penalties could amount to millions of dollars,” said Matthews. “Malpractice insurance would then stop covering the centers and the practices. And with the profit factor removed and jury awards piling up, health care providers will have to stop.”
Planned Parenthood on Notice?
This process could extend to powerful transition propagator Planned Parenthood, named in a lawsuit by de-transitioner Cristina Hineman earlier this year. After a single visit lasting approximately 30 minutes, Planned Parenthood providers prescribed Hineman cross-sex hormones and continued to do so for well over a year, despite Hineman’s documented history of mental health problems, the lawsuit alleges.
In her complaint, Hineman claims the transition treatments caused permanent physical scars.
Trump Plans Turnaround
In a recent announcement, President-elect Donald Trump laid out a plan to ban federal support, including Medicare and Medicaid participation to providers who engage in so-called gender-affirming care and gender transitions. Trump says he will also pass a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states, provide an avenue of legal recourse for victims, and direct the Department of Justice to investigate pharmaceutical companies and health care providers involved in these treatments.
The court of public opinion will ultimately decide how public policy handles the issue, says Simons.
“I’m always optimistic this is going to end, and how it ends is that people will hear what is actually happening,” said Simons. “It doesn’t take a medical degree just to hear what is happening and see that this isn’t right.”
Ashley Bateman (bateman.ae@googlemail.com) writes from Virginia.
