The Federal Trade Commission is finally suing the World Professional Association for Transgender Health over sweeping recommendations for pediatric gender medicine that allegedly rested on weak evidence and conjecture.
The action is long overdue.
WPATH’s dishonesty should surprise no one. The organization has openly rejected basic biology.
WPATH has disregarded basic standards of medical honesty for years. Although the complaint was filed only recently, the organization’s indifference to evidence — and to the safety of gender-confused children — has long been apparent.
In 2022, WPATH removed minimum-age recommendations from its standards of care, reportedly under pressure from then-Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, a transgender-identifying male.
Thousands of detransitioners now live with the physical and psychological consequences of procedures they underwent as minors. Many of the doctors involved relied on WPATH’s prestige and guidelines to justify interventions children could not fully understand or consent to.
Most doctors are unwilling to risk their licenses by prescribing dangerous drugs or performing irreversible procedures without institutional cover, regardless of their ideological sympathies. Organizations such as WPATH, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics provided that cover.
Holding those institutions accountable could bring down the entire house of cards supporting pediatric gender medicine.
WPATH’s dishonesty should surprise no one. The organization has openly rejected basic biology. In 2024, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported that a senior WPATH official denied that sex is binary.
Other reporting revealed that doctors recommending certain drugs to transgender-identifying patients knew the treatments were untested or potentially harmful but continued promoting them in the name of “justice.”
WPATH went so far as to include “eunuch” as a gender identity in draft guidelines published in 2021. It relied in part on material from the Eunuch Archive, a fetish website, to support the inclusion.
The organization suggested that doctors should castrate people who identify as eunuchs because they might otherwise attempt the procedure themselves.
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Why should Americans care about an organization few outside medicine had heard of until recently?
Because WPATH’s guidelines became a central source of authority in court cases defending pediatric sex-change procedures.
During 2023 litigation over an Alabama law banning such procedures for minors, opponents repeatedly cited WPATH’s standards to give their case an aura of medical credibility.
A federal judge subpoenaed WPATH’s internal documents concerning the creation of those guidelines. WPATH tried to quash the order, but the judge ruled that the material was of “crucial import” to the litigation.
The resulting documents steadily undermined WPATH’s credibility and helped lay the groundwork for the FTC’s lawsuit.
That judge understood in 2023 what the Trump administration and the FTC understand now: The medical professionals and activists behind WPATH’s guidelines helped create the current regime of pediatric gender medicine.
Calling them to account could become a decisive moment.
The FTC filed its complaint alongside attorneys general from Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas. The consequences could extend far beyond WPATH itself, affecting doctors, hospitals, professional associations, and court cases that relied on its authority.
Most important, the case could begin addressing the institutional failure that allowed so many young men and women to be fast-tracked into procedures they ultimately regret.
The Justice Department announced a settlement with the Cleveland Clinic to end "gender-affirming care" at the clinic for two decades, according to a press release.
The clinic also agreed to pay a fine of $308,000 after it was accused of misrepresenting the gender-transitioning care in order to secure insurance coverage.
The hospital called the criticism inaccurate and false and claimed that it did not perform gender-affirming surgeries for patients under 18 years old.
The clinic will also put up $2 million worth of restorative care for people wanting to detransition.
"The Department of Justice is steadfastly committed to protecting America's children. ... Today's resolution with Cleveland Clinic furthers that commitment and puts these providers on notice that this Department will vigorously enforce federal law where children are put at risk," Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said.
The DOJ compared the settlement to one previously reached with the Texas Children's Hospital. The hospital agreed to end sex-rejecting procedures to minors and pay a $10 million penalty.
"These historic commitments pair the cessation of these dangerous practices masquerading as medical treatment with substantial investments in remediating the destruction they cause and restoring the health of the victims," the DOJ said in its press release.
The Cleveland Clinic was bashed by Consumers' Research in 2025 for being one of the most woke hospitals in the U.S. The hospital called the criticism inaccurate and false and claimed that it did not perform gender-affirming surgeries for patients under 18 years old.
"I am grateful that institutions like Cleveland Clinic and Texas Children's have decided to be part of the solution, not part of the problem," said Brett Shumate, assistant attorney general for the Civil Division.
"Cleveland Clinic's commitment to providing millions of dollars towards care for detransitioners is emblematic of just that," Shumate added. "I am grateful for this resolution with Cleveland Clinic, but our work is far from over, and our division will continue to work tirelessly to protect America's children and hold accountable those that have preyed on vulnerable children, whether they be pharmaceutical companies or medical providers."
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Medical insurance claims in the United States are built around the federal government’s standardized system of diagnostic codes, designed to classify every conceivable injury and condition.
Yet among its more than 70,000 designations, there is no dedicated classification for a growing class of patients: regretful recipients of transgender "health care."
Patients requiring hormone replacement following gonad removal ... may face barriers to coverage without clearer diagnostic pathways.
The omission is all the more glaring when you consider some of the system’s more unusual distinctions.
"There's a code for a spacecraft collision injuring the occupant, getting ... struck by a duck" as well as "walking into a lamppost," said Dr. Kurt Miceli in a recent interview with Align. “But nothing for those who are trying to revert a gender transition.”
“So effectively, if you are someone who has been harmed by the medical system and you are trying to get medical care, there’s really no diagnosis,” he continued.
Miceli’s work centers on helping children through Stop the Harm, an organization that tracks gender-related medical interventions among minors. According to its database, more than 5,700 surgical procedures were performed on minors in the United States between 2019 and 2023.
California accounted for an estimated 1,359 of those cases, while Massachusetts reported approximately 300.
Miceli said he wants to “give a voice” to detransitioners by creating at least “some visibility” within the existing system of more than 70,000 codes. Such recognition, he argued, would signal that “this is a condition that we must direct resources to, we must appropriately treat, [and] we must build guidelines to help support.”
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Beyond recognition, Miceli said the absence of a dedicated classification complicates care. Without it, patients may face challenges navigating billing systems, obtaining reimbursement, or receiving coordinated follow-up treatment.
He added that there is room for multiple distinctions — separating medical complications, social transition, and surgical outcomes, for example.
One step in that direction may come as soon as October 2026, when an update to the ICD-10-CM is expected to include a new designation: “Gender Identity Disorder, in Remission.”
The term, petitioned by Miceli, is defined as the resolution of “clinical symptoms associated with gender dysphoria, where the cognitive experience of incongruence between experienced/expressed gender and natal sex has remitted, leading to alignment of experienced/expressed gender and natal sex.”
Miceli said he hopes future updates will go further, including classifications that explicitly recognize “desistance.”
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At the same time, he argued that legislative action may be necessary to ensure patients receive appropriate care and to “correct the harms that have been done to them.”
For example, patients requiring hormone replacement following gonad removal — or medical care after practices such as breast binding or genital tucking — may face barriers to coverage without clearer diagnostic pathways.
More comprehensive coding, he added, would also improve research and communication across the medical system.
“It’ll allow our physicians, our medical community to place that code onto the chart. We can get a better understanding of what’s going on,” Miceli said. “We can look at that code in association with other potential complications and, again, collect much more accurate real-world data.”
Detransitioner Claire Abernathy was just 14 years old when doctors told her parents she’d take her own life without hormones and surgery — and promised “gender care” would save her life.
“I started identifying as trans when I was 12 years old following a sexual assault and some pretty severe bullying that I was experiencing at school,” Abernathy tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on “The Glenn Beck Program.”
“Adopting this identity gave me, well, one, it gave me the ability to pretend to be a new person, someone that this didn’t happen to. And it also gave me an entire social network, a whole friend group of other kids who felt similarly to the way I did,” she explains.
That’s when Abernathy began going to therapists who were recommended by others with the same issues.
“They made my parents feel like abusers for being skeptical, for wanting to take pause before making irreparable changes to their child’s body,” she tells Glenn.
“Did anyone say, did any doctor say, ‘Hang on, we should look at the abuse’?” Glenn asks.
“No one. My mom asked about the abuse, the bullying, all these things that I’d gone through, disordered eating, and she was told in no uncertain terms, ‘No, that does not make a child think that they’re trans,’” Abernathy explains, noting that this occurred at “one of the most well-funded children’s hospitals in the nation.”
Abernathy was then put on testosterone at 14 years old, and then shortly after they were discussing surgery.
“I started testosterone in November of 2018, and by January, I was approved for surgery. It didn’t happen until June, but that was just because we wanted to wait until the summer between my eighth and ninth grade years,” she says.
Doctors told Abernathy and her parents that the only effective treatment for her “gender dysphoria” was “chemical and surgical intervention” and that if she did not go through with it, “the most likely outcome was suicide.”
“They didn’t tell me that it would permanently take away my ability to breastfeed. They didn’t tell me that the majority of kids who look to pursue this end up growing out of it,” she says. “There was a lot of things that I wasn’t told.”
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President Donald Trump declared war on gender ideology and the corresponding child sex-change regime upon retaking office. Despite the efforts of non-straight activists and overreaching federal judges, the campaign is off to a great start.
Pursuant to the president's Jan. 28 executive order titled "Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation," the Department of Justice has launched criminal investigations into several hospitals that have provided children with destructive sex-change procedures, and the administration has threatened offending medical institutions' federal funding.
In the face of this crackdown, some of the worst institutional offenders listed in the medical advocacy group Do No Harm's Stop the Harm Database have closed shop.
Stanford Medicine, for instance, paused its sex-change services for minor patients on June 2; Children's Hospital Los Angeles shuttered its infamous child sex-change center on July 22; and Kaiser Permanente recently announced it will stop providing sex-change surgeries for patients under 19 beginning Aug. 29.
Democrats continue to defend the crumbling sex-change regime despite the unscientific nature of "gender-affirming care," the falsity of the narrative constructed in its defense, and Americans' majoritive opposition to the barbaric practice.
Attorneys general from over a dozen states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin — plus the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) filed a lawsuit on Friday challenging Trump's Jan. 28 executive order, accusing the administration of violating federal law and of encroaching on states' rights in violation of the 10th Amendment.
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The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, claims that Section 8 of the executive order, specifically, is "unconstitutional and unlawful."
In that section, Trump instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to:
The Democratic coalition, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, demanded in their complaint that the federal court declare that health care provider-approved sex-change mutilations on minors do not violate the Female Genital Mutilation statute; the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act; or the False Claims Act.
"The federal government is running a cruel and targeted harassment campaign against providers who offer lawful, lifesaving care to children," James said in a statement. "This administration is ruthlessly targeting young people who already face immense barriers just to be seen and heard, and are putting countless lives at risk in the process."
'I'm glad that these leftists are making it crystal clear where exactly they stand so they can be held responsible to the fullest extent of the law.'
Non-straight activists recycled the disproven claim that sex-change procedures save lives in their support of the lawsuit and in opposition to the Trump administration's protection of minors.
Carla Smith, the CEO of the New York City LGBT Community Center, for example, stated that "the Trump administration's actions endanger the lives of young people who already face disproportionate rates of depression and suicide. We applaud Attorney General James and this coalition of attorneys general for standing up to these attacks and defending the right to gender-affirming care that is clearly recognized, supported, and protected by law."
Chloe Cole, a detransitioner who has raised awareness across the country about the horrors and fallout of sex-change medical interventions, told Blaze News she had mixed feelings about the lawsuit.
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"I'd hoped AG James and the other states would let this gender ideology fade into obscurity — the best outcome for kids. Instead, by suing the Trump administration to shield puberty blockers and surgeries, they're doubling down and showing just how deeply indoctrinated they are," Cole said. "No family is truly safe in a state where children are being mutilated."
Cole — who received sterilizing puberty blockers and hormone therapy at Kaiser Permanente at the age of 13, then underwent a double mastectomy — added, "When all this is over, I'm glad that these leftists are making it crystal clear where exactly they stand so they can be held responsible to the fullest extent of the law."
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman at Do No Harm, said in a statement to Blaze News, "With this lawsuit, the Democratic attorneys general are rejecting science and common sense. Ending these dangerous treatments for children is consistent with the evidence-based standards for treating children suffering from gender dysphoria."
"Meanwhile, this lawsuit is premised upon the cult of identity politics that profits from these irreversible and experimental procedures," Goldfarb continued. "Anyone who prioritizes an ideological and harmful agenda of gender activists over protecting children and providing them high-quality care should be ashamed."
The Trump administration is ready to fight back and confident it will ultimately prove victorious over the child sex-change regime.
"On day one, President Trump took decisive action to stop the despicable mutilation and chemical castration of children — which everyday Americans resoundingly support," White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Blaze News. "The president has the lawful authority to protect America's vulnerable children through executive action, and the administration looks forward to ultimate victory on this issue."
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in October will start recognizing detransitioning — reversing gender “transition” mutilation — in official diagnosis codes for purposes of insurance billing and data collection. Vice President J.D. Vance last week called for the jailing of medical professionals fraudulently using medical billing codes to get insurance to cover […]
Patients harmed by the atrocities of transgender 'medicine' may not experience the full effect for years, especially those coerced into treatment as minors.
Almost 90 percent just ... stopped.
‘Patients are being harmed by sex transition. That cannot be disputed … The medical profession has lost its way.’
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