The
current administration did not invent these intimidation tactics. Before Texas
lawmakers outright banned gender-affirming care for minors in 2023, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was experimenting with a variety of legal threats
against providers and parents meant to accomplish what a ban would, or worse. He
unilaterally deemed gender-affirming care for minors
to be “abuse” (three years ahead of Robert F. Kennedy’s similar decree, in December 2025, broadly defining such care as unsafe)
and directed state agencies to investigate parents of trans kids, should they
help their own children access care. He opened investigations into two Texas hospitals, claiming
they were violating unspecified state laws, and demanding that they turn over
the same kinds of records now being demanded of NYU Langone. By the time gender-affirming
care was banned in Texas, it was already nearly impossible to access. Some Texas families I met in 2021 as they were lobbying against the ban and other anti-trans laws had
already arranged care out of state, or had moved out of the state entirely.
But
for officials seeking to end gender-affirming care in Texas, the state’s ban was
not enough. Paxton began bringing lawsuits against individual providers who allegedly continued offering
gender-affirming care to minors, referring in court filings to one provider as
“a scofflaw who is putting the
health and safety of minors at risk,”
and another as “a Radical Gender Activist.” This week, Paxton, now a Trump-approved candidate for John Cornyn’s Senate seat, and
the DOJ announced their latest victory in such
efforts: They have forced the largest children’s hospital in Texas into
creating a so-called “detransition” clinic that, as Paxton put it, “will help
provide free care to those who have been victimized by twisted, morally
bankrupt transgender ideology.” The hospital must also pay $10 million in fines
and damages and revoke the medical privileges of five physicians.
In
the case of NYU Langone, we are seeing a number of extreme, lawless trends
collide: Providers and patients are being intimidated with the malicious
collection of private health care information; and states are attempting to
apply their bans on stigmatized health care to states that have no such bans—that
have, in fact, protective laws meant to ensure patients’ rights and patients’
access.