Sign up for The Brief , The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against a Dallas pediatrician, accusing her of violating state law by providing gender-transitioning treatments to at least 21 teenage patients.
Thursday’s filing is Paxton’s first attempt at suing a doctor by leveraging Senate Bill 14 , a 2023 legislation that prohibits physicians and health care providers from prescribing hormones to minors to transition their biological sex.
The lawsuit accuses May Lau, an adolescent medicine physician and associate professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, of violating SB 14 by prescribing testosterone to at least 21 patients between the ages of 14 and 17 to transition their biological gender or affirm their gender identity.
“Texas passed a law to protect children from these dangerous unscientific medical interventions that have irreversible and damaging effects,” Paxton said in a news release. “Doctors who continue to provide these harmful ‘gender transition’ drugs and treatments will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”