Justice Dept. Seeks to "Take Down" Pediatric Gender Medicine, Issues Raft of Subpoenas
At an FTC workshop scrutinizing pediatric gender-transition treatment, a Justice Dept. official announced it had subpoenaed nearly 20 gender clinics, investigating them for fraud and false claims.
The Trump administration’s whole-of-government assault on the controversial field of pediatric gender medicine is just getting started. Not only is the Federal Trade Commission laying the groundwork to target figures in this field for what the FTC asserts are deceptive and fraudulent practices, but the Department of Justice is gearing up for what could be civil and even criminal prosecutions.
On Wednesday, a Justice Department official announced that the Trump administration had already issued nearly 20 subpoenas against clinics that provide gender-transition medical procedures to minors. The department is investigating violations among them such as health-care fraud and the making of false statements.
During a daylong workshop scrutinizing pediatric gender medicine held by the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Chad Mizelle, chief of staff of the Department of Justice, made evident that under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the department was seeking “to take down” the entire field of pediatric gender medicine. (You can watch the entire proceedings on video here.)
“There’s no doubt in my mind,” said Mr. Mizelle, “that the industry that is formed around providing gender affirming-care and transitioning services for children has perpetuated one of the greatest frauds on the American public.”
FTC officials also provided details about the agency’s long-range plans to sanction pediatric gender medicine care providers. The entire workshop was geared around fleshing out the FTC’s assertion that it had standing to go after this medical field.
The Justice Department, Mr. Mizelle said, is investigating hospitals and other health care providers for fraudulent billing under Medicaid fraud and the False Claims Act. And it is targeting what he characterized as “false and deceptive claims by nonprofits and medical associations that have provided false, deceptive or scientifically dubious assertions about transition-related medical interventions, allegedly as cover for the clinics and the hospitals to be able to be with them.”
The evidence base supporting pediatric gender medicine, which was pioneered in the late 1990s and 2000s by Dutch researchers and first imported to the United States in 2007, has been subjected to increasing scrutiny during the 2020s. A slew of systematic literature reviews—the gold standard of scientific evidence—of the relevant research have all concluded that the evidence backing providing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to gender-distressed minors is wanting and inconclusive.
These research findings have lead a slew of European nations to sharply restrict minors’ access to these treatments. The systematic reviews have also formed part of the rationalization for bans in 25 states on minors receiving puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones for gender dysphoria. The Supreme Court effectively blessed these restrictions last month when, in the U.S. v. Skrmetti case, it found that Tennessee’s ban did not violate the Equal Protection Clause.
Throughout the FTC workshop, speakers provided scathing accounts of a medical industry that they characterized as unscrupulous and harmful to vulnerable young people. Among them were detransitioners and their parents (many of whom broke down in tears recalling their experiences), whistleblowers from pediatric gender clinics, attorneys, physicians and mental health professionals.
Several speakers pointed to a common practice of using the billing code “endocrine disorder not otherwise specified” rather than a code specific to treating gender dysphoria as an example of what they characterized as widespread fraud in this medical field. Others pointed to common rhetoric such as “sex assigned at birth,” which they said was deceptive and unscientific, or “top surgery,” which they asserted was egregiously euphemistic and downplayed serious surgical risk of a double mastectomy.
Speakers repeatedly pointed to a widespread practice among pediatric gender physicians of saying to parents, often in front of their gender-distressed children, “Would you rather have a live daughter or a dead son?”—or vice versa. This mantra has been employed widely to convince parents to consent to a medical transition for their child. The suggestion is that the child would have an extremely high chance of suicide absent these medications.
And yet there is no evidence to back the assertion that these treatments are lifesaving—a fact acknowledged by ACLU litigator Chase Strangio before the Supreme Court during oral arguments for Skrmetti in December. Furthermore, suicides, while elevated among gender-distresses youths, are, in fact, rare.
Gareth Amaya Price, recalling being subjected to the suicide mantra when his son was suffering from gender-related distress during his adolescence, said, “That was emotional blackmail, and, in my opinion, malpractice.”
The workshop’s hosts were eager to emphasize that the speakers came from across the political spectrum. And yet there was no evident diversity in their opinions on the validity of this medical field—or, as they argued, the woeful lack of it. Wholly absent were any supporters of providing medical transitions to children, such as the families and doctors who have testified in statehouses across the nation that access to these medical interventions has been vital to the well-being of children who identify as transgender.
The Justice Department, Mr. Mizelle said, has also issued subpoenas to drug manufacturers for medications used for gender-transition treatment—for what he said are “violations of drug marketing laws and the Food and Drug Cosmetic Act.”
Among the speakers at the workshop was Jordan Campbell, who founded the only law firm devoted solely to representing detransitioners, Campbell Miller Payne. Mr. Campbell very recently left the firm to join the Justice Department, as a deputy assistant attorney general in the consumer protection branch, where he now leads a team targeting the field of pediatric gender medicine.
Dr. Eithan Haim, a surgeon who in 2023 reported that Texas Children’s Hospital continued to provide gender-transition interventions to minors after publicly claiming to have stopped, spoke of his experience being targeted by the Biden Justice Department. “These people will be held accountable,” he said of pediatric gender medicine practitioners. “And there’s a very good chance this will stop even in the blue states.”
“Working on it, Dr. Haim,” replied Mr. Campbell, who is now armed with subpoena power.
In April, Ms. Bondi issued a memorandum that urged Justice Department prosecutors to target pediatric gender medicine providers with the use of a statute barring female genital mutilation. Mr. Mizelle said on Wednesday that the department is developing draft legislation that would build on such legislation to “more robustly protect children” from gender-transition treatment and surgeries.
The department is also working with Congress to enhance the ability of plaintiffs seeking to sue medical providers to seek remedies and recourse, Mr. Mizelle said.
States’ statutes of limitation are often quite restrictive for people seeking to sue clinicians and hospitals over the provision of pediatric gender-transition treatment. Former patients often need to file suit no later than the first few years of their early adulthood. This was the case with the young woman who is suing Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, one of the nation’s leading pediatric gender physicians and an avid proponent of the “live son/dead daughter” mantra. The young woman detransitioned at age 19 and sued by age 20. Many other detransitioners have had their cases thrown out for filing too late.
As for the specific nonprofits or medical associations the Justice Department might have targeted with subpoenas, the two most obvious are the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. WPATH’s trans-care guidelines have been subjected to scathing criticism after Alabama’s attorney general subpoenaed records showing the organization’s leadership was well aware of the weakness of the science backing pediatric gender medicine and sought to paper this over. The AAP’s 2018 policy statement backing the gender-affirming care method has been roundly criticized for making claims unsupported by science and for flawed or contradictory citations.
“There’s a basic principle of law: You cannot deceive consumers,” said Mr. Mizelle at the FTC workshop. “You cannot lie to them to get them to buy your products, use your services. You cannot commit fraud.”
And as for the FTC, he said the agency “has a very broad mandate—and a consumer protection mandate, specifically—with powerful investigative tools attached to it that’s very well positioned to tackle this issue.”
In a video message sent to the workshop, FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak acknowledged that the FTC does not regulate the practice of medicine. “But what the FTC can and should do,” she said, “is protect children from deceptive statements regarding such treatments. The FTC has previously enforced—and will continue to enforce—against deceptive representations made by medical practitioners, including claims in connection with treatments for transgender children.”
I reported last month for The New York Sun on the other actions that the Trump administration has taken to systematically take apart the field of pediatric gender medicine:
A White House executive order issued in January sought to forbid federal funding to health care providers that provided gender transition interventions to anyone under age 19. Accordingly, multiple prominent hospitals, including the Los Angeles children’s hospital, promptly at least paused their pediatric gender medicine programs. But two federal judges have since blocked the order pending litigation against it.
In April, Attorney General Bondi directed prosecutors to investigate doctors who have provided gender-transition surgeries to minors.
Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sent a letter to American health care providers urging them to cease following WPATH’s guidelines on pediatric gender-transition treatment and instead to consider such interventions risky and harmful. The same day, Mehmet Oz, director of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services and a former daytime TV star and GOP Senate candidate, sent a letter to providers requesting documentation about their pediatric gender-care services, including their efforts to change clinical practice guidelines in keeping with Kennedy’s characterization of these treatments.
This month, the FBI’s X account posted a request for tips regarding “any hospitals, clinics, or practitioners performing these surgical procedures on children,” even though gender-transition surgeries remain legal for minors in 23 states.
I am an independent journalist, specializing in science and health care coverage. I contribute to The New York Times, The Guardian, NBC News and The New York Sun. I have also written for theWashington Post, The Atlantic and The Nation. Follow me on Twitter: @benryanwriter and Bluesky: @benryanwriter.bsky.social. Visit my website: benryan.net
The effort to take down the entire fraudulent and activist-driven field of "gender medicine", which medicalizes gender nonconformity and turns people into lifelong patients living as impostors of the opposite sex, rather than overcoming regressive stereotypes and homophobia, is one of the few good things the Trump administration is doing, and I as a liberal can only cheer them on.
I hope that part of the take down includes Planned Parenthood. They are no longer advocates for women and sexual health. They are now in the business of medicalizing gender nonconformity and homosexuality in young (often autistic) women.