WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against a transgender healthcare nonprofit Wednesday, accusing it of misleading and coercing parents over gender-affirming treatment for their children.
The FTC’s complaint against the World Professional Association of Transgender Health is the latest in a series of legal actions from the Trump administration against organizations that provide gender-affirming treatment or work on transgender healthcare issues.
“WPATH deceived parents and children about the medical and scientific basis for such services, as well as their medical necessity, safety and efficacy,” a senior FTC official, who wished not to be identified, said in a call with reporters Wednesday.
The FTC was joined by Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas in the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Texas. Another senior FTC official on the call Wednesday said that the suit is seeking to prevent the nonprofit from making “future false, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims to parents and children.”
The suit alleges that the association’s standards of care, which are widely adopted by healthcare providers, were crafted with the specific goal of guaranteeing that insurance companies would cover the treatment as medically necessary, in turn generating profit for the association’s members.
But the association described the complaint as “baseless,” and said in a statement Wednesday that it’s just another example of the Trump administration’s attempts to “interfere with Americans’ rights to seek and obtain the healthcare that should be decided between a patient and their physician.”
The guidelines are informed by established scientific standards, expert consensus, and patient-centered values, the association said, adding that it supports individualized patient care, rather than a “one size fits all” approach.
The association also said the FTC is not a medical provider, and as such, has no right to interfere with individualized medical decision-making and doesn’t have jurisdiction over WPATH or its speech. It said the states’ claims have similar factual and legal flaws.
WPATH likes its chances
The lawsuit comes after the association filed its own suit against the FTC in February, seeking to block an investigation which it described as being part of an “all-of-government campaign to undermine access to gender-affirming care and attack the First Amendment rights of medical organizations.”
A federal judge in the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the association in May, temporarily pausing the FTC’s probe into the organization.
The association said Wednesday it’s predicting a similar outcome this go-around as well.
“A federal district court has already found WPATH is in a strong position to prove that the FTC is acting out of pure retaliation as part of the federal government’s relentless and targeted campaign to undermine gender-affirming care by attacking the First Amendment rights and the independence of professional medical organizations,” the organization said in its statement. “We expect the same result when we oppose this latest attack on WPATH and its mission to promote evidence-informed care and guidance for doctors and their patients.”
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