The largest transgender medical organization in the world has asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit filed against it, defending its heavily influential “Standards of Care” as non-actionable “opinion” protected by the First Amendment.
In June, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the attorneys general of Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas sued the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) over deceptive claims regarding the treatment of children. The complaint alleges that WPATH’s eighth edition of the Standards of Care (SOC-8) contains “core deceptive statements” that misled parents and providers about the necessity, effectiveness and safety of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for minors.
The following are among the specific claims challenged:
—that these interventions are medically necessary or effective at preventing suicide,
—that puberty blockers are fully reversible,
—that the guidelines reflect unbiased expert consensus grounded in high-quality evidence,
—that such treatments constitute the “standard of care.”
The FTC also highlighted explicit concerns that WPATH regularly fails to adequately disclose serious side effects.
In its motion to dismiss, WPATH insisted SOC-8 articulates professional consensus directed at clinicians, not consumers, and therefore falls outside the FTC’s reach under the First Amendment. But what raised eyebrows was WPATH’s statement that its care standards “are non-actionable opinions about subjects on which there is ‘medical and scientific uncertainty.’”
As the Daily Signal’s Tyler O’Neil observed, “if the newest edition of the standards of care is not ‘reasonably interpreted as a statement of objective fact,’ that should undercut the medical groups—such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association—that treat the standards as gospel when it comes to transgender ‘care.’”
Hospitals across the country have relied on them to justify harmful, experimental interventions on children.
Yet WPATH’s appeal to “medical and scientific uncertainty” stands in sharp contrast to its own prior statements. The group vehemently condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld states’ authority to ban permanent, experimental “sex-change” procedures for minors.
“This Supreme Court ruling is a dangerous setback for transgender health and human rights in the United States,” WPATH’s official statement declared. “Let us be clear—healthcare bans of any kind are rooted in stigma, misinformation and fear and this one comes at the expense of the youth in need of this [transgender] care.”
But in its motion to dismiss the FTC case, WPATH changed its tactics, leaning heavily on the Skrmetti high court decision it denounced in 2025.
“The Supreme Court has recently addressed the ‘medical and scientific uncertainty’ regarding transgender healthcare for minors and concluded that it ‘underscore[s] the need’ for states to have ‘legislative flexibility,’” WPATH’s motion states. “The FTC cannot erase that ‘flexibility’ by declaring deceptive certain statements about care that states not only permit but deem necessary.”
O’Neil noted the inconsistency: “WPATH opposed state restrictions on sex-rejecting procedures when Republican legislatures enacted them. Now, citing Skrmetti, it is arguing that states do have the right to make their own laws on these procedures. Whatever the legal merits of this argument, it marks a significant rhetorical shift.”
In addition to all of this, SOC-8 itself removed previous age minimums for various surgeries and hormone treatments after external pressure, including from the American Academy of Pediatrics, rather than new scientific evidence.
Critical studies on the efficacy and safety of transgender medicine on children, such as the Cass Review, have long highlighted the low quality of the underlying evidence, conflicts of interest among study authors, and the gap between WPATH’s strong recommendations and the actual data. And yet, the same document has been treated as authoritative by major medical bodies and used to secure insurance coverage and clinical practice for minors.
As the legal battle before Fort Worth District Judge Reed O’Connor proceeds, the case raises a central question for the court: can an organization that long insisted its medical care guidelines reflected settled medical consensus now escape legal accountability by claiming certain aspects are just opinion?
Relevant Bible passages to ponder: Genesis 1:27, Exodus 20:16
