Victims of 'gender industrial complex' will get justice in court, attorney for detransitioners pledges
Lawsuits against doctors, hospitals and gender clinics will proceed despite President Donald Trump's executive order halting federal funding for the "surgical mutilation" of minors, an attorney representing several detransitioners said.
This comes as the Department of Education invited detransitioners to a meeting on Detrans Awareness Day last week.
"These are young women who, as early as 13 years old, were victimized by this gender industrial complex," Mark Trammell, executive attorney at the Center for American Liberty, told Fox News Digital in an interview. "We have other clients who had double mastectomies at 15, 16, they're all put on puberty blockers, all put on off-label cross-sex hormones, and all without being afforded informed consent."
Shortly after Trump's executive order took effect, a federal judge in Baltimore last month issued a temporary restraining order, halting the order's implementation.
As such, some hospitals that had previously complied with Trump's order reversed course, Trammell said, citing the Children's Hospital Los Angeles as an example that had re-introduced some of its so-called gender-affirming treatments.
"But what can stick is lawsuits," Trammell said. "And at the end of the day, we can achieve justice. We can secure justice for these young women by hopefully recovering financial damages for what they've suffered."
Trammell noted that their involvement with gender ideology lawsuits began with cases involving social transitions in schools, such as the case of Jessica Konen, which resulted in a settlement with a school district.
He said many parents became aware of the issue when they discovered that schools were socially transitioning children, sometimes as young as fifth grade, without notifying parents. One of Trammell's clients, Aurora Regino, learned her daughter was being socially transitioned from female to male in school, including using a male name and pronouns, without any communication with her mother.
"We're suing doctors individually, holding them personally liable," Trammell said. "We're also suing the hospitals that employ them. And so these are, again, these are cases that are being brought in tort. So the idea is we're going to sue the individuals who caused the injury."
Last week, the Department of Education hosted a meeting with six detransitioners and activists "fighting to protect children from the serious harms caused by radical gender ideology," the department said in a March 10 news release. The group shared its concerns about gender ideology in schools with new Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
Trammell said the administration's meeting with the activists was "encouraging" to see them "even recognizing just their existence."
"No teacher should attempt to persuade or coerce a student to undergo a gender transition," McMahon said in a statement. "No parent should be lied to or prevented from knowing what is going on with their child's mental or physical health. We stand firmly alongside parents, professionals, advocates, and especially detransitioners, who understand firsthand the damage caused by indoctrinating kids to believe that they can ever be 'born in the wrong body.'"
The federal judge's restraining order also hasn't stopped Trump from continuing full steam ahead to stamp out what he calls "radical gender ideology" as the administration reminded hospitals of "the dangerous chemical and surgical mutilation of children, including interventions that cause sterilization," in a Department of Health and Human Services memo sent out to hospitals and medical providers last week.
The notice also said, "CMS may begin taking steps in the future to align policy, including CMS-regulated provider requirements and agreements, with the highest-quality medical evidence in the treatment of the nation's children in order to protect children from harmful, often irreversible mutilation, including sterilization practices."
"In recent years, medical interventions for gender dysphoria in children have proliferated," the memo reads. "Initiated with an underdeveloped body of evidence and now known to cause long-term and irreparable harm to some children, CMS may begin taking steps in the future to adjust its policies to reflect this reality and the lack of medical evidence in support of these harmful treatments."
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