Texas Attorney General Sues Doctor For Allegedly Giving More Than 20 Minors ‘Gender Transition’ Treatments
by Molly Bohannon · ForbesTopline
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued an individual doctor for allegedly providing “gender transition” treatments to nearly two dozen minors, violating a state law passed in 2023 that prohibits health care providers from prescribing gender-transition medical interventions.
Key Facts
Paxton filed the suit Thursday against a Dallas-area doctor who allegedly “illegally provided high-dose cross-sex hormones to twenty-one minor patients for the direct purpose of ‘transitioning’ the child’s biological sex,” according to a press release from Paxton’s office.
The suit alleged Dr. May C. Lau was “falsely diagnosing and billing patients” for treating an endocrine disorder rather than using gender-related diagnosis codes in an effort “to conceal that she is transitioning their biological sex or affirming.”
Lau prescribed or supervised “illegal, dangerous, and experimental medical procedures” to minors between ages 14 and 17 “for the purposes of transitioning their biological sex or affirming their belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex,” according to the lawsuit.
Lau is a pediatrician who practices adolescent and young adult medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Health in Dallas, The Dallas Morning News reported.
Forbes has reached out to UT Southwestern for comment.
Key Background
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 14 into law last June, and it took effect on Sept. 1, 2023, despite facing a number of legal challenges. A judge temporarily blocked the law after finding it “interferes with Texas families’ private decisions and strips Texas parents … of the right to seek, direct, and provide medical care for their children,” but Paxton’s office appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court, which allowed it to go into effect, the Texas Tribune reported. With the signing of Senate Bill 14, Texas joined a number of other states that have been banning gender-affirming care, though many have similarly had legal hurdles. Earlier this year, a Florida judge said key elements of the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors were unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court said it will weigh in on the legality of a similar law in Tennessee that bans puberty blockers or hormone therapy for minors for the purpose of altering the gender they were assigned at birth.
Chief Critics
Abbott and Paxton have been criticized by advocates for targeting the LGBTQ+ community through laws and policies. The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, said Abbott was “continuing his crusade to harm transgender and non-binary Texans” and “using his bully pulpit to do just that — bully” after he said he would try to pass a ban on transgender collegiate athletes. And in 2021, Paxton sued the Biden administration over guidance aimed at protecting LGBTQ+ people in the workplace. The following year, his office received criticism after it reportedly requested data on how many Texans had changed their gender on their driver’s license, which advocates told The Washington Post they feared was another way to target transgender people.
Big Number
26. That’s how many states have enacted laws or policies to prevent minors from getting gender-affirming care, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Seventeen of those states are facing legal challenges tied to the laws or policies.
What To Watch For
How the suit plays out. If Lau is found to have violated the law, she could have her medical license revoked and face hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fines, NBC News reported.