A transgender medical group said its influential guidelines are “opinions” in a court motion against government plaintiffs — an acknowledgment that critics call a huge confession.
The Federal Trade Commission and conservative states want to “silence one half of a scientific debate” by accusing the World Professional Association for Transgender Health of deceptive trade practices, WPATH claimed in a July 28 filing seeking to dismiss the case. This narrative unmasks WPATH as purely agenda-driven after health institutions embraced its pro-sex-change “Standards of Care” as scientific consensus, health experts and watchdog groups said.
“‘Just a guideline’ yet WPATH has systematically infiltrated and bullied nearly every mainstream medical organization into signing on to it!” emergency physician and commentator Jared Ross said in a Tuesday X post.
“WPATH now agrees that pediatric transgender medicine is marked by ‘medical and scientific uncertainty,’” the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine said Monday, quoting the filing. “It represents its [latest Standards of Care] recommendations merely as an expression of WPATH’s ‘free speech.’ Yet for years, WPATH presented its guidelines as an unquestionable medical standard of care. The social and scientific costs of questioning their recommendations were steep and could be career-ending.”
The June FTC-led lawsuit accuses WPATH of writing the Standards of Care to make it easier for health providers to fraudulently obtain insurance coverage for sex-change “care” by deeming it “medically necessary.” Texas, Alaska, Iowa, and Nebraska joined the case against the group based on state-level trade laws.
All that government officials seek is to “prohibit WPATH from expressing scientific opinions” via “censorship,” WPATH’s attorneys argued. WPATH cited the same “medical and scientific uncertainty” that played a major role in the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Skrmetti, a June Supreme Court ruling that upheld Tennessee’s ban on child sex-change procedures. The motion also argued that the Trump administration is overstepping the bounds of federal authority since “many states” have passed laws on determining “medically necessary” gender procedures that reference WPATH’s standards.
“Plaintiffs seek to brand one side of a scientific debate as ‘deceptive’ without even considering the science,” WPATH wrote. “No court has ever permitted that. For good reason: The government does not get to silence one half of a scientific debate.”
“It’s possible that WPATH just gave up the game,” Leor Sapir, who co-wrote a 2025 federal government report on gender medicine, said in a Tuesday post. “If its recommendations are merely one ‘opinion’ in a legitimate debate defined by ‘uncertainty,’ and if doctors should judge independently whether to follow them, why should insurers follow them? Why should judges defer to them as the accepted standard of care?”
Skeptical experts and officials are increasingly investigating health providers’ widespread practice of billing insurance companies or Medicaid for transgender procedures, the Washington Examiner reported. Some institutions in the U.S. openly admit to writing dubious diagnoses such as “Endocrine Disorder” on paperwork to obtain coverage for sex-rejecting hormone therapy. That includes one federally funded Chicago facility with a senior adviser who co-wrote WPATH’s Standards of Care.
FEDERALLY FUNDED GENDER CENTER ‘UNDER GUISE OF CARE’ USES DUBIOUS DIAGNOSES FOR HORMONE DRUGS
WPATH also encouraged doctors in 2024 guidance to use the “Endocrine Disorder” description for billing instead of diagnoses that explicitly describe transgenderism.
“Anyone who has been paying attention knows that WPATH is an organization led by activists with an agenda, not ethical professionals,” watchdog group Advocates Protecting Children said Tuesday in response to WPATH’s court filing.