Florida sues 3 leading medical groups over gender-affirming care for minors
Participants walk up Market Street in the 55th annual San Francisco Pride Parade in San Francisco on Sunday, June 29, 2025. Florida on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against three leading medical organizations, accusing them of pushing gender-affirming care medicine policies for profit. File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photo
Florida is suing three major medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, accusing them of pushing misinformation about gender-affirming care to drive demand for their members’ services and generate profit from membership sales.
The lawsuit was announced Tuesday by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in a video statement, naming the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the Endocrine Society and AAP as defendants.
“We believe these organizations fail to disclose the risks, limits and evidence when promoting so-called gender-affirming care for children,” he said. “For years, these groups have insisted the recommendations were settled science but behind closed doors they knew the evidence was weak, they knew the outcomes uncertain and the risks very real.”
In 2023, @GovRonDeSantis signed legislation to ban so-called "gender-affirming care" for kids. Now it’s time for accountability!
Today, my office sued @wpath, @AmerAcadPeds, and @TheEndoSociety for mutilating kids and misleading families. pic.twitter.com/RrbIfYEFEq— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) December 9, 2025
Gender-affirming care is a holistic approach to treating gender-dysphoria and is supported by every major medical association as treatment for both adults and children.
It includes a range of therapies, from psychological and behavioral to medical interventions, with surgeries for minors being exceedingly rare. A June 2024 study by Harvard-affiliated researchers found that cisgender minors and adults were far more likely to undergo analogous gender-affirming surgeries than their transgender counterparts.
However, the medical practice has been a target for conservatives for years amid a larger campaign that civil rights organizations see as a threat to the rights of LGBTQ Americans.
The lawsuit announced Tuesday accuses the three organizations of being part of a coordinated campaign to develop clinical guidelines recommending sex intervention for pediatric gender dysphoria.
Florida accuses them of circulating their clinical guidelines “to sell memberships.”
“Because defendants continue to generate demand for pediatric sex interventions by deceiving the public with their phony guidelines, sex intervention providers and ideologues continue to purchase memberships,” Florida states in the lawsuit.
“Defendants’ reprehensible and immoral actions capitalize on the mental distress of children — as well as the natural affections and fears [of] their parents — to help their members sell lucrative surgeries and drugs that irreversibly mutilate and chemically alter children’s bodies without providing any credible medical benefit.”
Florida is asking the court to impose penalties on the defendants and for injunctive relief.
UPI has contacted the WPATH, AAP and the Endocrine Society for comment.
The lawsuit was filed after Florida banned gender-affirming care for minors in 2023. A federal judge struck down then ban the following year, though an appeals court later stayed the ruling as litigation continues.
All three defendants have previously come out against legislation seeking to interfere in the healthcare of children.
“Anti-transgender healthcare legislation is not about protections for children but about eliminating transgender persons on a micro and macro scale,” WPATH President Marci Bowers said in a March 2023 statement. “It is a thinly veiled attempt to enforce the notion of a gender binary.
Critics of such laws and lawsuits argue they are based on false and misinformation information that fuels unfounded fears that ultimately harm transgender and gender-diverse people.
Proponents of such laws and lawsuits rebut that they are seeking to protect children from experimental medicine.
According to the Movement Advancement Project, 26 U.S. states and one territory have bans, though they may not be in effect, on medication and surgical care for transgender youth.
There are an estimated 42,800 transgender youth between the ages of 13 and 17 in Florida, representing about 3.2% of the state’s youth population, according to the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute.