Paxton accuses Texas doctor of providing gender-affirming care in violation of state law

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) on Thursday sued a doctor in Dallas, accusing her of providing gender-affirming care to nearly two dozen minors in violation of the state’s law. 

Paxton accuses May Chi Lau of “blatantly violating Texas law” by providing hormone-replacement therapy to 21 minors in the period between last October and this August. 

His office said in a statement outlining the lawsuit that the doctor “allegedly used false diagnoses and billing codes to mask these unlawful prescriptions.” 

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

Texas’s Supreme Court upheld in an 8-1 ruling the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors in late June this year. 

Lau specializes in adolescent medicine. She is an associate professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. 

The lawsuit was filed in Collin County district court. 

The Hill has reached out to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center for comment.

State bans on gender-affirming care are set to come before the Supreme Court this session after the Biden administration challenged a similar measure passed in Tennessee.

“The laws are inflicting profound harms on transgender adolescents and their families by denying medical treatments that the affected adolescents, their parents, their doctors, and medical experts have all concluded are appropriate and necessary to treat a serious medical condition,” the Department of Justice wrote in court filings.