Seattle Children’s Sues Texas AG for Requesting Records of Texans Who Received Out-of-State Transgender Services

Seattle Children’s Hospital is suing the Texas attorney general’s office, after the hospital refused to hand over the medical documents of Texans who received gender-transition services at the Washington hospital.

After Texas passed a bill earlier this year that prohibits transgender youth from receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapy, the state’s attorney general Ken Paxton began to investigate how many Texas youth had crossed state-lines and received such treatments in Washington. Paxton requested that Seattle Children’s Hospital provide the number of patients from Texas who were treated in Washington, along with their diagnoses and prescriptions. Paxton also inquired as to what Seattle Children’s procedures are for treating gender-confused youth from Texas.

The hospital filed a lawsuit against the attorney general in Travis County District Court on December 7, claiming that a Washington law “prohibits Washington-based entities such as Seattle Children’s from ‘[c]omply[ing] with subpoena, warrant, court order, or other civil or criminal legal process for records, information, facilities, or assistance related to protected health care services that are lawful in the state of Washington.'” In its latest response, the hospital asked the court to overrule Paxton’s original civil investigation.

“Seattle Children’s took legal action to protect private patient information related to gender-affirming care services at our organization sought by the Texas Attorney General,” a Seattle Children’s spokesperson said. “Seattle Children’s complies with the law for all health care services provided.”

Paxton hasn’t just crossed state lines to ensure that Texas youth are treated properly; the attorney general opened investigations into Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston and Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, after the hospitals reportedly performed gender-transition procedures on minors.

“I’ve been clear that any ‘gender-transitioning’ procedures that hurt our children constitute child abuse under Texas law,” Paxton said in May. “Recent reports indicate that Texas Children’s Hospital may be unlawfully performing such procedures, and my office it is working to uncover the truth.”

“Though many unhinged activists compromising the healthcare field think otherwise, children are not to be treated as science experiments,” he continued. “Doctors and hospitals should not be pushing mutilative and irreversible ‘gender transitioning’ procedures that will negatively impact innocent children for the rest of their lives.”

Seattle Children’s claimed that the attorney general’s probe was a “sham request,” and said that the hospital is not in Texas, does not advertise gender-transition services in Texas, and does not employ staff who provide such services in Texas. Paxton, meanwhile, has been clear in his attempt to restrict Texas residents from receiving harmful puberty blocking drugs or irreversible gender transition surgeries — procedures the attorney general has called “child abuse.”