Texas AG sues doctor for violating ban on prescribing trans drugs to kids
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a complaint against a doctor who allegedly violated a state law prohibiting “gender transition” procedures for minors by prescribing irreversible puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to 21 patients.
The suit was filed Thursday against Dr. May C. Lau, who is accused of engaging in “illegal, dangerous, and experimental medical procedures” on “at least 21 minor patients” with the intention of “transitioning their biological sex or affirming their belief that their gender identities are inconsistent with their biological sex.”
Lau is identified in the suit as an employee of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who has hospital privileges at Children’s Medical Center Dallas and Children’s Medical Center Plano.
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The complaint accuses Lau of violating Texas Health & Safety Code § 161.702(3), a measure passed last year as Senate Bill 14 that prohibits doctors from giving children puberty blockers under most circumstances.
“Lau has violated the law by providing, prescribing, administering, or dispensing testosterone to minor patients for the purposes of transitioning their biological sex or affirming their belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex,” reads the complaint, in part.
The suit went on to briefly describe the experiences of 21 unnamed minor patients, a few being as young as 14, who were prescribed irreversible puberty blockers in defiance of state law.
“Lau deceptively misleads pharmacies, insurance providers, and/or the patients by falsifying patient medical records, prescriptions, and billing records to indicate that the use of puberty blockers for minor patients are for something other than transitioning their biological sex or affirming their belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex,” the suit states.
In a statement released Thursday, Paxton said, “Texas passed a law to protect children from these dangerous unscientific medical interventions that have irreversible and damaging effects.”
“Doctors who continue to provide these harmful ‘gender transition’ drugs and treatments will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” he added.
Passed in May of 2023, SB 14, which became law in September 2023, bans medical professionals from performing body mutilating sex-change surgeries or prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children.
The state law included exceptions to allow such procedures when a child is "experiencing precocious puberty," "born with a medically verifiable genetic disorder of sex development," or if a minor "does not have the normal sex chromosome structure for male or female as determined by a physician through genetic testing."
A group of Texan families represented by multiple progressive organizations filed a lawsuit against SB 14, claiming that it deprived trans-identified youth of necessary healthcare.
However, in June, the Texas Supreme Court upheld the law, with Justice Rebeca Aizpuru Huddle authoring the majority opinion, concluding that “the Legislature made a permissible, rational policy choice to limit the types of available medical procedures for children.”
“We therefore conclude the statute does not unconstitutionally deprive parents of their rights or physicians or health care providers of an alleged property right in their medical licenses or claimed right to occupational freedom,” Huddle wrote.
Justice Debra Lehrmann wrote the dissent, arguing that the law was “cruel” and “unconstitutional,” and that the majority opinion “effectively forecloses all medical treatment options that are currently available to these children.”
“Although this Court has enshrined a robust conceptualization of parental autonomy for many years, in the blink of an eye, the Court tosses that precedent aside today,” Lehrmann dissented.
“Concerningly, the Court's opinion puts all parental decisions at risk of being overruled by the government. The Court's attempt to cabin its opinion to only this case makes its outcome-driven decision-making all the more transparent.”
