Texas AG Announces Opening of Nation’s First Gender Detransitioning Clinic

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Tuesday that the country’s first-ever gender detransition clinic has been opened by the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, in line with an agreement the hospital made earlier in May.

The multidisciplinary clinic will offer medical care to individuals who have undergone transgender procedures. Specifically, for patients through age 21, the hospital will provide detransition-related medical care, while for those above 21, the hospital offers detransition-related obstetric and gynecologic care, the attorney general’s office said in an Oct. 27 statement.

Services include surgery, psychiatry, endocrinology, primary care, fertility counseling, speech pathology, and psychology, according to the clinic’s webpage, which added that care plans will be individualized depending on patient needs.

The launch of the clinic is part of a settlement the hospital reached with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Texas attorney general in May to resolve a federal investigation into the hospital’s transgener procedures.

As part of the resolution, the hospital agreed to pay more than $10 million in civil penalties and damages to settle claims against it and committed to establishing a detransition clinic. The agreement was aimed at resolving allegations that the hospital submitted false billings to obtain insurance coverage for pediatric “sex-rejecting” procedures, the DOJ said.

Texas Children’s Hospital said in a May 15 statement that while it had agreed to a settlement, the case was “wrought with falsehoods and distractions.”

“To be clear—we are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation. This settlement will allow us to redirect those precious resources to focus on the life-saving care and groundbreaking discoveries of our exceptional clinicians and scientists,” the hospital said.

In its recent statement, the attorney general’s office said that the claims against Texas Children’s Hospital were brought under the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act for billing the state Medicaid “unallowable and illegal ‘gender-transition’ interventions.”

In 2023, Texas banned transgender treatments such as surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormone therapy given to minors with gender dysphoria, which is when a person identifies with the opposite sex or no sex instead of his or her actual sex.

Federal Crackdown

The detransition clinic’s services are required to be fully funded by Texas Children’s Hospital for the first five years, which will provide patients with care at no cost during this period, the attorney general’s office said.

“I will continue to ensure that this clinic provides the care and support that victims of the radical left’s gender ideology deserve. Together, we will protect our children and defeat the dangerous ideology that has inflicted irreversible harm on innocent kids,” Paxton said in the statement.

In a federal crackdown on transgender procedures for minors, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized a rule in August ending federal Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program funding for “sex-rejecting procedures” for children and youth. The procedures covered cross-sex hormones, surgical operations, and puberty blockers. 

“Children deserve our protection, not experimental interventions that pose serious risks and convey no proven benefits. By cutting off federal funds for these sex-rejecting procedures, we’re following the science, saving taxpayer dollars, and, most importantly, protecting children from potentially irreversible harm so they can truly flourish,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in an Aug. 11 statement.

On Aug. 5, the DOJ also announced an agreement with the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, which agreed to stop providing “gender-affirming care” to minors.

The hospital agreed not to perform such surgeries on children and adolescents or administer cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers. This followed a similar resolution previously made with the Cleveland Clinic.

The agreement with the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center “is a reminder to hospitals, medical providers, and pharmaceutical companies that the Justice Department will vigorously enforce federal law, especially where the lives of children are endangered,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in the statement.