Texas Sues Doctor Who Prescribed Hormones to Minors for Gender Transition

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing a Dallas-area doctor of violating the state’s prohibition on gender treatments for minors and concealing her activities via false insurance-billing codes.

May Lau, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and medical director of the adolescent and young adult clinic at the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, is charged with prescribing testosterone to at least 21 underage female patients seeking to “transition” to male.

Lau’s alleged conduct violates Senate Bill 14 (SB 14), a law passed by the Texas Legislature and signed by Governor Greg Abbott in May 2023. According to Paxton’s lawsuit, SB 14 “prohibits surgeries, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones for the purposes of transitioning a child’s biological sex or affirming a child’s belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex.”

The law took effect on September 1, 2023, and was upheld by the Texas Supreme Court in June 2024.

The lawsuit opens:

The debate in Texas on the legality of dangerous and experimental medical procedures seeking to transition or affirm a child’s belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex is over.

“Today,” it declares, “enforcement begins against those who have violated the law.”

The state alleges that “Lau is a scofflaw who is putting the health and safety of minors at risk.” Furthermore, it claims that Lau is violating state law “by engaging in false, misleading, and deceptive acts and practices to mislead pharmacies, insurance providers, and/or patients by falsifying medical records, prescriptions, and billing records to represent that her testosterone prescriptions are for something other than transitioning a child’s biological sex.”

Transitional Figure

Paxton characterizes Lau as “a radical gender activist,” and with good reason. He writes that she “has published extensively advocating for the medical transition of children’s biological sex.” In addition,

Lau was previously associated with the now dissolved Gender Education and Care Interdisciplinary Support (GENECIS) Program, which was dedicated to using medical interventions to transition the biological sex of children.

With GENECIS’ director, Lau co-authored “several publications advocating for the medical transition of minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria.”

Lau further established her gender-activist bona fides in a 2020 presentation entitled “Transgender Care of Adolescents and Adults.” Among her startling admissions:

• She alters patients’ medical records to reflect their preferred name, gender, and pronouns — every time patients change their minds.
• “We’re not sure about the safety and long-term effects of puberty suppression in youth with gender dysphoria.”
• “Some of the consequences of hormonotherapy are permanent.”
• She has provided “top surgery” (i.e., a double mastectomy) to adolescents who “have not even started hormone treatment.”

Hormongering

In his complaint, Paxton notes that, while the activist World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) recommends prescribing testosterone cypionate to adolescent females in a futile-but-dangerous effort to turn them into males, both the Mayo Clinic and the Food and Drug Administration state that the hormone should not be administered to females.

Nevertheless, that is what Lau has done on at least 21 occasions, the state alleges. Its lawsuit details those minors’ history under Lau’s care. It asserts that, despite Lau’s ever-changing medical records, all are biological females whom Lau prescribed testosterone cypionate. In some cases, she prescribed the hormone after SB 14 took effect. In others, she prescribed it before the law’s effective date but instructed the patient to fill it after that date.

Paxton contends that

Lau cannot circumvent SB 14 by writing prescriptions to her patients prior to the SB 14 taking effect with orders to fill or refill the prescriptions after it takes effect … because a “prescription” order is not a singular discrete act, but a continuing act of treatment. [Emphasis in original.]

Such actions also have the effect of “providing” the medication at the time the prescription is filled, which, if it occurred after September 1, 2023, likewise violates SB 14.

Code-switching

Paxton further alleges that Lau used false billing codes to get insurance companies to cover gender treatments they might otherwise deny — a practice the LGBTQ-activist group Campaign for Southern Equality endorsed in a “fact sheet.” That no longer appears to be online, but is still referenced on its website.

Paxton cites one patient, a 15-year-old biological male whom Lau diagnosed with gender dysphoria, as an example of this practice. Although Lau inserted a puberty-blocking device in the patient, she “falsely billed [his] insurance using the diagnostic code for an endocrine disorder,” says the complaint. Several months later, she changed the patient’s sex to female in medical and billing records.

The patient later met with Dr. Izzy Lowell of Queer Med, which exclusively treats transgender patients. Lowell, too, billed these visits as endocrine-disorder treatments, the state alleges.

In the midst of this, a different provider at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas who saw the patient “correctly used billing codes for gender identity disorder,” claims Paxton. Lau and Lowell, therefore, had to have been deliberately trying to conceal what they were doing.

The state is asking the court to issue an injunction against “Lau and all persons in active concert or participation with her” and to fine her up to $10,000 per violation.

Said Paxton in a press release:

Texas passed a law to protect children from these dangerous unscientific medical interventions that have irreversible and damaging effects. Doctors who continue to provide these harmful “gender transition” drugs and treatments will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.