Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston reached a settlement on Friday with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over transgender medical services it offered until 2023, which will see it open the nation’s first “detransition clinic.” File Photo by James Nielsen/UPI | License Photo
Texas Children’s Hospital plans to create the first “detransition clinic” in the United States as part of a settlement with the state for provided transgender care, officials announced Friday.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the settlement, which will also require the hospital to fire and revoke the medical privileges of doctors, as well as pay a $10 million fine.
The hospital will make care at the clinic free of charge for its first five years and offer services for children to detransition to their gender assigned at birth.
Paxton investigated the Houston-based hospital in 2023 for the transgender care services it offered at the same time the state legislature was outlawing gender-affirming care for children.
“I applaud Texas Children’s Hospital for changing course and committing to being part of the solution by agreeing to form a first-of-its kind Detransition Clinic that will provide free care to those who have been victimized by twisted, morally bankrupt transgender ideology,” Paxton said in a statement.
The settlement, he said, is meant to reverse damage caused by “ideologically motivated physicians who harmed patients with their transition care, which the attorney general’s office alleged included the use of false diagnosis codes.
The hospital, in its own statement, said that it had spent the past three years cooperating with the investigation, “navigating an unconscionable campaign of mistrusts and mischaracterizations of gender affirming care.”
It said that multiple internal and external investigations support that the hospital has been compliant with all laws — before and after the state ban on transition care.
“Today, we made the difficult decision to settle with the Texas attorney general and the Department of Justice, closing a chapter that has been wrought with falsehoods and distractions,” the hospital said.
“To be clear — we are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation,” it said. “This settlement will allow us to redirect those precious resources to focus on life-saving care and groundbreaking discoveries of our exceptional clinicians and scientists.”
