Senate Bill 14, signed into law last year, prohibits medical interventions such as surgeries, puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors seeking to transition genders. The Texas Supreme Court upheld the law against legal challenges in June.
“Evidence obtained by the Office of the Attorney General revealed that a Dallas-area doctor illegally provided high-dose cross-sex hormones to twenty-one minor patients for the direct purpose of ‘transitioning’ the child’s biological sex,” the release states. “The doctor allegedly used false diagnoses and billing codes to mask these unlawful prescriptions.”
Paxton named Dr. May C. Lau as the defendant. Lau is an adolescent medicine specialist and associate professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center, according to the hospital’s website. A representative from the Children's Health System of Texas, of which UT Southwestern is a part, said in an email that "our top priority is the health and well being of our patients. Children’s Health follows and adheres to all state health care laws."
Lau and UT Southwestern Medical Center did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
BREAKING: My Office Sues Doctor for Illegally Providing Harmful “Gender Transition” Treatments to Nearly Two Dozen Texas Children
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) October 17, 2024
My office has sued a North Texas doctor for blatantly violating Texas law by providing prohibited “gender transition” treatments to… https://t.co/8oyNSIR6bE
“Lau has engaged in deceptive trade practices, including by misleading 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 or affirming a child’s belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex,” the lawsuit reads. Lau is later referred to as “a scofflaw.”
SB 14 was one of the highest-profile, contentious topics of the entire Legislative session in 2023, passing by a 19-11 vote along party lines. (Editor's Note: According to the Human Rights Campaign, "[e]very single major medical organization, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, supports the provision of age-appropriate, gender-affirming care for transgender and non-binary people.")
This isn’t the first time Paxton has gone after members of the medical community he suspects of providing gender-affirming care to minors. In December 2023, Seattle Children’s Hospital sued Paxton to prevent the release of patient information after the hospital was issued an investigative subpoena demanding any patient records of Texas residents who had received gender transition-related care. In April, the Seattle hospital announced it would no longer seek to do any business in Texas.
