The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) last week for making “false and unsubstantiated” statements which enabled the promotion of sex-rejecting procedures to minors.
The lawsuit, which Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas joined, alleges WPATH’s Standards of Care, Version 8 (SOC-8), the group’s treatment recommendations for transgender-identified people, deceived families about the scientific support for and effectiveness of pediatric sex-rejecting procedures — including puberty blocking drugs, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries.
The FTC isn’t the first to lay out SOC-8’s blatant scientific deficiencies. It is, however, one of the first to assign WPATH an alleged motive for pushing sex-rejecting procedures on American families and children: cold, hard cash.
The filing asserts:
The vast majority of WPATH members work in the “transgender” procedures industry. Some, including three of five members of WPATH’s executive committee, perform sex-rejecting procedures. Others work in related businesses, like “gender-affirming” counseling.
WPATH lines its members’ pockets by legitimizing and expanding access to sex-rejecting procedures. According to the FTC, this has always been WPATH’s purpose, dating back to its inception in 1979.
That year was a disastrous one for the burgeoning “transgender” procedures industry. Johns Hopkins University closed down its “Gender Identity Clinic,” which opened in 1966, after a university psychiatrist published a paper “showing no objective benefit to transition.”
Other clinics followed suit, reflecting general unease over difficulty diagnosing “dissatisfaction with one’s sex traits” and inability to determine which patients would benefit from sex-rejecting procedures.
Lack of academic backing prompted insurance companies to stop covering the experimental interventions — drastically limiting the number of people who could purchase them.
The FTC’s filing claims members of the floundering “transgender” procedures industry created WPATH to recreate a semblance of academic support for their dangerous, experimental medical interventions.
The group published its first Standards of Care in 1981 to establish itself as an academic authority. In the four decades since, it has successfully masqueraded as an expert medical group, rather than a profit-driven industry lobby.
Until very recently, WPATH had nearly unilateral power to determine accepted standards of care for transgender-identified people, including what procedures insurance companies paid for. The Department of Health and Human Services’ 2025 report on the harms of sex-rejecting procedures for minors notes, “Many U.S. public and private health insurers and regulatory bodies rely on SOC-8 when making coverage determinations.”
The FTC alleges WPATH used this power to gradually expand its customer base.
In 2008, for instance, WPATH first declared opposite-sex hormones and sex-rejecting surgeries “medically necessary,” a term which generally triggers insurance coverage.
Less than two decades later, the FTC notes, SOC-8 encourages insurance companies to consider “‘medically necessary’ virtually every pediatric medical transition service that a transition doctor could perform for a fee,” including “gender affirming hair removal.”
WPATH members have also made untold millions by performing sex-rejecting procedures on kids. Lowering age limits on transgender medical interventions gives doctors a chance to cash in on the temporary sexual identity confusion kids often face.
The filing explains.
Similarly, if a doctor administers puberty blockers to a child, they are significantly more likely receive opposite-sex hormones and sex-rejecting surgical procedures.
The estimated lifetime cost of “transgender” medical interventions for a man ranges from $75,000 to nearly $411,000, according to the filing. For a woman, the range is even wider, spanning from about $67,000 to as much as $606,000.
“WPATH has long represented itself as the final authority for the gender-related treatment of children, advancing profit-driven ideology unsupported by science and withholding crucial information from children, parents and doctors,” Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers wrote in a press release.
“We’re proud to work with the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to hold WPATH accountable for deceiving parents and medical professionals and causing harm to children and nationwide.”
“Patients and their families have been deceived into believing the organization is an authoritative, medical body, when, in truth, their recommendations are based on politics and ideology,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird added.
“Parents and children deserve better.”
The Daily Citizen couldn’t agree more. We thank the FTC, Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas for bringing this action in service of children and families harmed by WPATH. Please pray justice be done in this case.
Additional Articles and Resources
FTC Begins Investigating ‘Gender Affirming’ Medical Community for Deception, False Advertising
Activist Group WPATH Influences Judgement in Case of Prisoner Receiving Trans Surgery
Suicidal or Stable? WPATH Activist’s Contradictory Evaluation Secures Felon Transgender Surgery
The WPATH Files Exposes ‘Surgical and Hormonal Experiments on Children’
The WPATH Files – Transgender Interventions Are ‘Unethical Medical Experiments’