DOJ Targets Doctors in Trans Youth Treatment Crackdown
The Dept. of Justice issued subpoenas as part of an investigation into alleged “healthcare fraud” involving gender-affirming treatments for minors.
The U.S. Department of Justice says it has sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics allegedly providing gender-affirming health care to minors, as part of an investigation into accusations of “healthcare fraud” and “false statements.” In a press release, the department said it is targeting medical professionals allegedly “involved in performing transgender medical procedures on children.”
“Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
The Department of Justice is also investigating how companies market prescription drugs and whether they have violated the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. As part of that probe, the agency reportedly issued subpoenas to major manufacturers of “the drugs used in trans-related medical interventions,” according to Chad Mizelle, the Justice Department’s chief of staff, as reported by The Hill.
Bondi previously pledged to investigate and prosecute practitioners who recommend gender-affirming care to minors, as well as drug manufacturers and distributors who make false claims about the on- or off-label use of puberty blockers, sex hormones, or other drugs used in gender transition.
The Department of Justice’s actions extend President Donald Trump’s efforts to ban gender-affirming treatments for individuals under age 19 and to severely restrict treatment access for transgender adults. Two federal courts have blocked parts of an order that sought to withhold federal funding from hospitals treating youth with gender dysphoria. Trump has also issued an executive order declaring that the U.S. government will not recognize transgender identity as legitimate or valid.
In June, the FBI asked the public to submit tips about any hospitals, clinics, or medical practitioners that perform gender-affirming surgeries on minors.
A month earlier, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent letters to nine hospitals demanding information on “medical interventions for gender dysphoria in children.” In announcing the move, CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz cited a 400-page report rejecting gender-affirming treatments for minors and recommending “exploratory therapy” as the preferred approach.
Critics alleged that the therapy recommended in the report was simply a repackaged form of conversion therapy aimed at LGBTQ minors.
One of the report’s nine authors, Alex Byrne, a professor of philosophy at MIT, later wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post arguing that, based on their review of medical evidence, pursuing transition-related treatments for minors “is not empirically or ethically justified.”
He also pushed back against claims that “exploratory therapy” amounts to conversion therapy, citing a portion of the report that states “quality psychotherapy is exploratory by definition” and warning that mischaracterizing it could create a nocebo effect — a negative psychological response that deters both therapists from providing care and patients from seeking it.
Currently, 25 states prohibit doctors from prescribing gender-affirming treatments to minors, with two more specifically banning surgical interventions. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban, ruling that states have the authority to regulate gender-affirming care and that such bans do not constitute discrimination based on sex or transgender status.
Although the Department of Justice has not filed charges against anyone providing gender-affirming care to minors, its investigations may still serve a broader purpose — intimidating providers into refusing to offer such care, or in some cases, avoiding transgender patients altogether.
“It’s meant to have a chilling effect on physicians providing access to necessary care, fearing that it will be characterized as chemical and surgical mutilation of children,” Robin Maril, a law professor at Willamette University, told NBC News in April, following Bondi’s announcement of investigations into providers and drug manufacturers.
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