Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued a doctor for providing gender-affirming care to young people in the state, in what’s believed to be the first such lawsuit in the nation.
Paxton — whose well-documented and extreme anti-transgender views have pushed the families of trans kids to move out of Texas “into a safe state” — accuses Dr. May C. Lau of providing hormones to 21 patients in violation of a 2023 law that prevents transgender youth from being prescribed hormone therapies and puberty blockers.
The 35-page complaint, filed Thursday in Collin County District Court, also alleges Lau “engaged in deceptive trade practices, including by misleading pharmacies, insurance providers and/or patients by falsifying medical records, prescriptions and billing records” to offer gender-transitioning care to those 21 patients.
Lau, an associate pediatrics professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, also treats patients at the city’s Children’s Health Center.
Neither Lau nor UT Southwestern has yet to comment on the lawsuit, while Children’s Health said in a statement that it “follows and adheres to all state health care laws.”
Paxton — who just over a year ago survived a historic Senate vote that would have made him the state’s first official convicted on impeachment charges in more than 100 years — is asking the court to issue an injunction against Lau and fines of up to $10,000 per violation.
In February 2022, Paxton issued a legal opinion stating that gender-affirming treatments could legally constitute “child abuse when performed on minor children” — a move slammed by LGBTQ rights advocates and trans kids’ families as a political stunt.
Earlier this year, the Texas Supreme Court allowed the state’s ban on health care for trans youth to remain in effect — a “cruel and arbitrary ruling” that would have a “devastating impact” on trans youth and their families, said Karen Loewy, senior counsel with the nonprofit Lambda Legal.
Thursday’s lawsuit is the “predictable and terrifying result” of that law, according to Harper Seldin, a staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project.
“Doctors should not have to fear being targeted by the government when using their best medical judgment,” Seldin said. “Politicians like Ken Paxton should not be putting themselves between families and their doctors.”