Detransitioner who regrets mastectomy wins $2 million in malpractice lawsuit against doctors

A woman who sued her doctors over a breast removal surgery she received when she was 16 and identified as transgender has been awarded $2 million in damages, marking the first time a detransitioner has won a medical malpractice lawsuit over the care they received as part of their transition.

Multiple right-wing news outlets are calling the decision “historic,” but even the woman’s lawyer is downplaying its significance, insisting the case was never about “the legitimacy of gender-affirming care.”

As The Free Press first reported, on Friday, a jury in New York State sided with 22-year-old Fox Varian, who sued her psychologist and a plastic surgeon, accusing them of failing to adhere to standards of care around gender-affirming care for minors. According to the New York Times, Varian claimed that her doctors did not obtain adequate consent or adequately inform her of the risks associated with a double mastectomy she received in 2019 and came to regret.

As multiple outlets have reported, Varian suffered from depression, anxiety, social phobia, eating disorders, and body-image issues as an adolescent, and was diagnosed with autism at 14. Court documents reportedly show she began questioning her gender at 15. She changed her name multiple times, used he/him pronouns, began binding her breasts, and told her psychologist, Kenneth Einhorn, that she wanted to transition.

According to both the New York Times and the Epoch Times, Einhorn, who has no formal training in treating transgender patients, claimed in court that Varian insisted she needed top surgery. In October 19, nine months after Varian expressed a desire to transition, Einhorn referred her to plastic surgeon Simon Chin.

Crucially, however, Einhorn referred to Varian’s diagnosis as “body dysmorphia” rather than gender dysphoria in his letter to Chin. He also reportedly referred her to an LGBTQ+ nonprofit center for additional counseling, where Varian continued to express uncertainty about her gender. However, Einhorn never followed up with the center. According to the Epoch Times, both Einhorn and Chin admitted in court that had they known about Varian’s continued uncertainty, they would not have referred her for the surgery or performed it.

As both the Epoch Times and the New Republic noted, the jury was not asked to issue a verdict on whether minors should receive gender-affirming surgeries — such procedures are already exceptionally rare — but whether Einhorn and Chin had adhered to accepted standards of care.

Dr. Loren Schechter, president-elect of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which sets medical standards for gender-related care, even testified as an expert witness on behalf of Varian. Schechter testified that he believed the Einhorn and Chin’s decision to approve the surgery was based on “assumption and inference,” according to the New York Times.

“This case was a medical malpractice case, not a referendum on gender-affirming care,” WPATH said in a statement following the verdict. “When care is delivered ethically and responsibly within these guidelines, the integrity of the field is strengthened.”

Similarly, Varian’s lawyer, Adam Deutsch, issued a statement echoing arguments he’d made in court. “This was never a debate over the legitimacy of gender-affirming care,” he said, according to the Times. “It was about whether medical professionals met the standards that covered their own profession.”

Einhorn and Chin “just didn’t have the experience to deal with someone questioning their gender identity,” Deutsch added. “At the bottom of all of this was a lack of collaboration between the two of them, and lack of communication to follow through.”

At the same time, Benjamin Ryan, an independent journalist who covered the case for The Free Press and who has been critical of gender-affirming care for minors, suggested in a video promoting his reporting that the verdict “could help reshape the legal landscape around youth gender medicine.”

Describing the jury’s verdict as “decisive and historic,” Ryan said that Varian’s case “marks a turning point” and “could contribute to a reckoning over lax assessment standards by care providers when they consider whether irreversible medical interventions should be offered or given to minors with gender dysphoria.”

He said the case “signals a growing wave of detransitioners turning to the courts” and noted that by his count, nearly 30 similar civil cases are currently working their way through courts across the U.S. But as the Times noted, it remains unclear what impact Varian’s case will have on other cases.

Following Friday’s verdict, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) released a statement advising against conducting “gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery” on people under the age of 19. While the February 3 statement does not mention the Varian case, as the Times notes, it marks the first time a major American medical association has shifted its guidance on gender-affirming care for minors.

February 10, 2026 0

LGBTQ Pride flag removed from NYC Stonewall National Monument after Trump admin directive

Republican lawmakers want to take away drivers licenses from trans people in Kansas with new bill

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Kansas Republicans are trying to take away currently valid driver’s licenses from transgender people in the state if they have corrected the gender marker on them in a new bill that has also been expanded – under a sneaky maneuver that allows changes to a bill without a public hearing – to be one of the “most extreme” bathroom bills in the nation.

H.B. 2426 was already very anti-trans. It defines “gender” under the law in terms of “chromosomes,… hormones, gonads and nonambiguous internal and external genitalia present at birth” and says that driver’s licenses can only have someone’s sex assigned at birth on it. The bill instructs the state government to invalidate all driver’s licenses that do not have a gender marker on them that reflects a person’s sex assigned at birth and to reissue new driver’s licenses.

But state Republican lawmakers expanded the bill last week, adding a strict anti-trans bathroom ban to a bill already seeking to ban trans Kansanians from changing the gender markers on their driver’s licenses.

The legislators used a state procedure called gut-and-go, which allows lawmakers to completely replace an existing bill’s language with pretty much anything they want while bypassing a public hearing.

Even before the addition of the bathroom amendment, Kansas lawmakers were already trying to push the bill through with as little public input as possible.

Republicans introduced the gender marker aspect of the bill with less than 24 hours’ notice before a public hearing. But residents nonetheless rose to the occasion, submitting hundreds of testimonies opposing the bill.

“You had a bill introduced one day at 3:58 p.m., it was scheduled for a hearing the next day, less than 24 hours notice,” state House minority leader Brandon Woodard (D) told the Topeka Capital-Journal. “Testimony had to be submitted by 10 a.m., and yet Kansans cobbled together hundreds of pieces of testimony that we were still able to print and submit.”

Republicans, Woodard said, “do those sorts of things in an attempt to shield. They know that the public’s not on the side with them. That’s not civil. When we delivered those pieces of testimony, the committee assistant said, ‘Oh my goodness, this is going to take me days and days to upload.’ I said, ‘Next time, the chair should consider giving people and Kansans a couple of days notice.’”

After all that, the Republicans weren’t done. Democrats are enraged over the addition of the bathroom amendment, proposed by State Rep. Bob Lewis (R). “We all thought that this bill was probably a bathroom bill, and now it’s showing its true colors,” state Rep. John Carmichael (D) told the Kansas Reflector.

“What this bill is about, with this amendment, is making it so that people who are transgender or people who are intersex have no safe place to go to the bathroom.”

“This is an attempt to obfuscate what we’re doing here,” Carmichael added. “If you’re in favor of a lack of transparency, if you’re in favor of taking bill numbers and playing them like a shell game, this is the amendment for you.”

Lewis claimed the amendment was “for privacy concerns and for public safety concerns.”

“I think this is a necessary bill,” he told the Capital-Journal.

Trans journalist Erin Reed called the bill “the most extreme anti-transgender measure in the United States,” explaining that it could punish trans people who use the bathroom that does not align with their sex assigned at birth with a misdemeanor with possible jail time.

But what “turbocharges it,” she said, is a provision allowing individual people to sue trans people for using the bathroom they deem “incorrect.”

“Critically, nothing in the provision limits its application to publicly owned buildings,” Reed explained. “As written, it would not only be the first bathroom bounty law to target transgender people directly, but also the first to extend a bathroom ban into private spaces—effectively creating the nation’s first private bathroom ban if enacted by empowering bounty hunters to search for trans people in bathrooms.”

Reed said she confirmed with multiple legal experts and lawmakers that, despite the bill appearing to only target public spaces, it would also apply to private bathrooms.

The bill is supported by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R). Republicans have made it a major priority and are trying to pass it as quickly as possible. Democratic Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly will likely veto it if it makes it to her desk.

“If passed,” Reed said, “what follows would be the bill’s most consequential test: an effort to override that veto in a Legislature where Republicans currently hold a veto-proof majority, but where some may view the bill as too extreme. For transgender people in the state, that effort may be the most consequential in years.”

February 4, 2026 0

Spain plans to give half a million undocumented migrants legal status

Wisconsin pediatric hospitals end gender-affirming care, risking health of trans youth

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Two of Wisconsin’s largest pediatric hospitals have stopped providing gender-affirming care for transgender youth, Wisconsin Public Radio reports.

Children’s Wisconsin and University of Wisconsin (UW) Health have ended the treatment for minors, after pressure from the Trump administration. Advocates say the end of gender-affirming medical care will lead to negative mental health effects for trans youth.

In a statement, Children’s Wisconsin cited “escalating legal and federal regulatory risk” facing providers across the nation as the reason it is “currently unable to provide gender-affirming pharmacologic care.” The hospital added that LGBTQ+ children should be treated with “support, respect, dignity, and compassion.”

The hospital will continue to offer mental health services for patients and families.

In December, the Department of Health and Human Services, under the direction of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced plans to end all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.

“Under my leadership, and answering President Trump’s call to action, the federal government will do everything in its power to stop unsafe, irreversible practices that put our children at risk,” Kennedy said, announcing the funding threat. “This administration will protect America’s most vulnerable. Our children deserve better — and we are delivering on that promise.”

In reality, gender-affirming medications for young people are considered by every major American medical association to be safe, reversible, and essential to the well-being of trans youth.

UW Health said its hospital system will pause prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapy for patients under 18 years old “due to recent federal actions.” The hospital remains committed to providing “high-quality, compassionate” care to LGBTQ+ patients, officials said in a statement.

“We recognize the uncertainty faced by our impacted patients and families seeking this gender-affirming care and will continue to support their health and well-being,” they said.

Steve Starkey, executive director for OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center in Madison, said the consequences of ending the care will be grave.

“It will definitely have a negative impact on the rates of suicide, and the mental health of the trans community” in general, he said. “It affects trans adults as well, because it’s like an attack on all trans people.”

Starkey pointed to rates of suicide and suicidal ideation, which are already high for the trans community.

A 2023 study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found that more than 80% of trans adults had suicidal thoughts, while more than 40% had attempted suicide.

“For trans people of all ages, being able to express themselves in the gender that they feel that they are is important for their mental and physical health,” Starkey said. “By not allowing trans people to do that, to have the support, it just means that they are not able to be wholly who they are.”

In the last week alone, hospitals and clinics in Orange County, Riverside, and San Diego, California — and in Tacoma, Washington too — announced plans to shutter gender-affirming care programs for trans youth.

Those closures follow dozens of other hospitals and healthcare facilities ending the care under threats from the Trump administration, in the form of funding cuts or investigations initiated by the Justice Department, even before last month’s federal funding ultimatum.

A year ago this week, Trump issued an executive order vowing to end what he called the “chemical and surgical mutilation” of children with gender-affirming care. Republicans have used these terms to outrage people and vilify medical providers of the care, but puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapies don’t “mutilate” kids, and gender-affirming surgeries are rarely (if ever) conducted on minors.

A protester at Children’s Hospital of Orange County this week described the same care as life-saving.

“I’m a transgender woman, and I’m here to tell you that denying people this gender-affirming care doesn’t make gender dysphoria go away,” Stephanie Wade, chair of Lavender Democrats of Orange County, told LAist. “All it does is make it metastasize into suicidal depression. And I’ve been there. I dealt with this as a child. We can’t take this away from kids.”

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) is staffed by trans people and will not contact law enforcement. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for youth via chat, text (678-678), or phone (1-866-488-7386). Help is available at all three resources in English and Spanish.

February 3, 2026 0

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Missouri Supreme Court upholds ban on gender-affirming care for minors

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Missouri’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors this week, along with a prohibition on Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care for anyone in the state.

As the Missouri Independent reports, the court’s unanimous decision upholds a 2024 circuit court ruling in a case challenging Senate Bill 49. The law, signed by Gov. Mike Parson (R) in 2023, bans minors from accessing any form of gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and surgeries. It also bans the state’s Medicaid program from covering gender-affirming care for people of all ages.

The challenge against the law was brought by Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Missouri on behalf of three families of transgender young people, medical providers, and LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, who argued that the law should be subject to heightened scrutiny, a more rigorous legal standard applied to cases involving the classification of individuals by specific characteristics like gender.

According to the Missouri Independent, the state Supreme Court rejected that argument, as had the lower court. While plaintiffs had argued that the law discriminates on the basis of sex and transgender status, Judge Kelly Broniec wrote in the court’s decision that S.B. 49 “classifies only based on medical use and age.”

The court’s reasoning echoes that in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last year in United States v. Skrmetti, which held that Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth does not discriminate on the basis of sex or transgender status.

As the Missouri Independent notes, Supreme Court precedent allows lawmakers broad discretion when it comes to issues “fraught with medical and scientific uncertainty.”

While for decades there has been broad scientific consensus — including among all major American medical associations — that gender-affirming care is safe, evidence-based, and often lifesaving for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, conservative organizations and some American media outlets have made massive strides in recent years in sowing doubt about that consensus.

While lawyers for the plaintiffs put forth multiple expert witnesses to defend gender-affirming care for young people during the 2024 trial, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office faced serious questions about the credibility of some of its key witnesses.

In September, Lambda Legal attorney Nora Huppert argued that the lower court’s decision upholding S.B. 49 included “legal and factual errors.” But writing for the Missouri Supreme Court this week, Broniec nonetheless said that the state had “demonstrated the ongoing debate among medical and ethical experts regarding the risks and benefits associated with the treatments at issue.”

The court also rejected arguments that the Medicaid ban violates Missouri’s constitution, with Broniec noting that adults in the state can still pay out-of-pocket to receive gender-affirming care.

Gillian Wilcox, director of litigation at the ACLU of Missouri, responded to the decision saying that it “not only allows the state to target transgender Missourians access to health care but also leaves everyone’s health care options at the whims of politicians, should certain care ever fall into the political arena.”

January 30, 2026 0

New Idaho bill would ban cities from banning LGBTQ+ discrimination

Idaho Family Policy Center, which wrote the bill, echoed Skaug’s arguments

The Idaho House Local Government Committee voted to introduce Skaug’s bill Wednesday, teeing it up for a full committee hearing with public testimony. All 14 Republicans on the committee supported introducing it, and the committee’s two Democrats opposed it.

Rep. Steve Berch, a Boise Democrat, called the bill “an overreach of legislative power or state power over the cities and communities.”

Skaug told the committee that the bill would ban more than just local antidiscrimination policies for LGBTQ+ protections, saying it would also prevent housing-related measures that deal with income and familial status. In an interview after the committee hearing, Skaug couldn’t immediately share which localities have those other nondiscrimination measures.

In preparing the bill, Skaug told the Idaho Capital Sun that he worked with the Idaho Family Policy Center and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group.

In a statement, Idaho Family Policy Center President Blaine Conzatti said local antidiscrimination ordinances “are frequently weaponized against small business owners — especially wedding vendors or those offering creative design services.”

“No small business owner should ever be forced to choose between violating their sincerely held religious beliefs or leaving the marketplace altogether,” he said. “… Government officials have forced bakers, photographers, florists, graphic designers, and wedding venue operators to participate in same-sex wedding ceremonies and pride festivals.”

Planned Parenthood critiques bill as stripping local control

Rep. Marco Erickson, an Idaho Falls Republican, made the motion to introduce the bill in committee.

In 2013, the Idaho Falls City Council first passed an ordinance barring LGBTQ+ discrimination in housing and employment, becoming the seventh Idaho town with such protections at the time, Boise State Public Radio reported. In 2020, the Idaho Falls City Council expanded the discrimination protections to public accommodations, the Post Register reported.

In a statement, Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates’ Idaho State Director Mistie DelliCarpini-Tolman critiqued the bill as stripping local control.

“In places across Idaho, locally elected officials are ready and willing to stop discrimination, and this bill blocks them from doing exactly that, what voters elected them to do,” Tolman said. “That isn’t small government. It’s a uniform denial of basic protections that tells LGBTQ+ Idahoans and other marginalized residents that their safety and dignity don’t matter.”

January 30, 2026 0

Florida Republicans want to jail pharmacists as two new bills targeting gender-affirming care advance

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Two bills in Florida advanced out of committee last week that would give the state attorney general more power to investigate and press felony charges against health care professionals who provide gender-affirming care in the state, including against therapists who discuss gender issues with minor patients and pharmacists who fill prescriptions that may be used as gender-affirming care.

Last week, the Criminal Justice Subcommittee passed H.B. 743 in a 12-5 vote, Florida Politics reports. The bill would allow state Attorney General James Uthmeier to sue health care practitioners for up to $100,000 per violation for providing gender-affirming care to minors. Mainstream medical organizations support gender-affirming care for trans kids because it has been shown to be life-saving and safe.

S.B. 1010 would make it a felony for doctors, school counselors, or psychologists to advise minors on gender-affirming care or “aid or abet” another health care professional in helping minors get gender-affirming care. The bill gained near-unanimous support from the state senate’s Committee on Children, Families, and Elder Affairs, according to the Florida Phoenix.

If that version of the bill passes, medical professionals could get a $100,000 fine per violation and up to five years in prison.

Florida banned gender-affirming care for trans youth in 2023. Supporters of the new bills say that they are necessary to further crack down on gender-affirming care in the state for “biblical” reasons.

“We have to uphold the principles and standards that made this country great, biblical, constitutional law, and order at all costs. And sometimes that stings,” state Rep. Taylor Yarkowsky said at last week’s hearing.

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Lauren Melo (R), stressed that pharmacists would be punished under her bill, something she says is necessary because, she claimed, health care professionals are “committing fraud” by prescribing gender-affirming care medications but recording the purpose of the medications as something other than gender-affirming care.

“What we’re seeing is there’s coding that’s actually being used that is becoming the problem, and hundreds of thousands of dollars is spent per child for them to transition and codes are being misrepresented where they are saying that it’s an indoctrination disorder instead of saying it’s a gender identity disorder,” she said.

Democrats stressed that the bill could have unintentional side effects. State Rep. Kelly Skidmore (D) said that the bill is not about gender-affirming care but is being pushed by state Attorney General Uthmeier to expand his power.

“It is about giving one individual and maybe his successors authority that they don’t deserve and they cannot manage,” she said, referring to Uthmeier’s involvement in the Hope Florida scandal, where state Republicans are accused of laundering money and committing fraud. “They’ve proven that they cannot be trusted. This is a terrible bill.”

State Rep. Mike Gottlieb (D) said that doctors might be scared from prescribing hormonal medications to people with severe menstrual symptoms lest a pharmacist misinterpret the reason for the prescription.

“You’re going to see doctors not wanting to prescribe those kinds of medications because they’re now subject to a $100,000 penalty,” he said. “We’re really not considering what we’re doing and some of the collateral harms that it’s having.”

Behavioral health care professional Savannah Thompson told WUSF that the bill would make it more difficult for doctors to even talk to trans patients.

“This could increase the feelings of fear from my clients who are under 18, but it also can increase the likelihood that these professionals won’t be able to talk with their clients, honestly and openly, to give them the care and the support that they deserve and need,” she said.

January 27, 2026 0

US EEOC scraps guidance that expanded workplace protections for LGBTQ workers