The nation\u2019s largest children\u2019s hospital has agreed to a legal settlement with Texas and the Trump administration over gender-affirming care for transgender youth that includes a $10 million payment to the state, the administration and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Friday. <\/p>\n
Texas Children\u2019s Hospital, based in Houston, said in a statement that it had agreed to the settlement \u201cto protect our resources from endless and costly litigation.\u201d The hospital, which serves more than 1 million patients annually, said Paxton\u2019s office and the U.S. Department of Justice has investigated its care for three years, forcing it to \u201cnavigate an unconscionable campaign of mistruths and mischaracterizations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hospital announced in 2022<\/a> that it would stop gender-affirming hormone treatments for minors after Paxton issued a legal opinion calling such care \u201cchild abuse\u201d and Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state\u2019s child welfare agency to investigate reports of care as abuse. In 2023,<\/a> Texas became the most populous state to ban gender-affirming care for minors \u2014 at least 27 ban or restrict it \u2014 and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2025<\/a> that states can do so.<\/p>\n Paxton said the settlement will require Texas Children\u2019s to set up a \u201cdetransition clinic\u201d to provide free care to transgender patients for five years to \u201creverse the damage\u201d from gender-affirming care. He described it as the first \u201cdetransition clinic\u201d of its kind in the nation, although that could not immediately be confirmed.<\/p>\n \u201cThis historic settlement reflects an institutional and fundamental shift away from radical \u2018gender\u2019 ideology,\u201d Paxton said in announcing the settlement. <\/p>\n Paxton\u2019s office did not release a copy of the agreement, and the statement from Texas Children\u2019s did not discuss its specific terms.<\/p>\n The leader of the LGBTQ rights group Equality Texas said Texas Children\u2019s \u201chas lost its integrity and put politics over patients\u201d and called the settlement \u201cembarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPaxton is blackmailing a hospital system into creating a resource that no one is asking for,\u201d CEO Brad Pritchett said in a statement. \u201cIt ignores the actual science and years of data about the overwhelming benefits of gender-affirming care.\u201d<\/p>\n Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has moved to use its regulatory power<\/a> to block gender-affirming care for minors, and the DOJ has demanded access to providers\u2019 records.<\/a> Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement Friday that the DOJ would \u201cuse every weapon at its disposal\u201d to stop gender-affirming care for children.<\/p>\n Paxton is running for the U.S. Senate, and he announced the settlement less than two weeks before a May 26 runoff with him locked in a tight race<\/a> to unseat GOP incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. President Donald Trump \u2014 who has aggressively sought to roll back<\/a> transgender rights \u2014 has not publicly endorsed a candidate in the race. <\/p>\n Most major medical groups see access to gender-affirming care as important for people with gender dysphoria. Transgender youth, parents and providers have described it as life-saving for youth who are depressed or suicidal because their gender identities do not match the sex assigned them at birth.<\/p>\n Gender-affirming care may include counseling, medications that block puberty, hormone therapy to produce physical changes or surgeries to transform chests and genitals, although those are rare for minors.<\/p>\n The hospital said it fully cooperated with Paxton\u2019s office and the DOJ, produced more than 5 million documents and did its own internal investigations. All of them showed that it never violated the law, the hospital said.<\/p>\n \u201cThese efforts have required significant staff time and financial resources to defend ourselves,\u201d its statement said. \u201cThis 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.\u201d <\/p>\n Paxton said the agreement also requires Texas Children\u2019s to fire \u2014 \u201cand never again hire\u201d \u2014 five doctors who provided gender-affirming care, agree never to provide such care and to change its bylaws so that any doctor violating the state law automatically loses any privileges at the hospital.<\/p>\n The $10 million payment will go to the state\u2019s Medicaid program. Paxton had accused the hospital of submitting false billings, an allegation it rejected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The nation\u2019s largest children\u2019s hospital has agreed to a legal settlement with Texas and the Trump administration over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[107583,145,12690,490,392,584,56,3309,1967,1183,287,27,29,28,87420,1760,30915,1499,464,17269],"class_list":["post-294868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-brad-pritchett","tag-donald-trump","tag-gender","tag-general-news","tag-greg-abbott","tag-health","tag-houston","tag-john-cornyn","tag-ken-paxton","tag-lgbtq","tag-politics","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-todd-blanche","tag-tx-state-wire","tag-u-s-department-of-justice","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}