Whistleblower faces federal charges after revealing alleged continuation of gender-affirming care at Texas Children’s Hospital

Whistleblower faces federal charges after sharing documents that allegedly exposed Houston hospital for providing gender-affirming care to minors after Texas authorities equate medical practice with child abuse children.

Houston surgeon Eithan Haim is charged with four counts of criminal HIPAA violations after disclosing internal documents that allegedly showed Texas Children’s Hospital continued to provide gender-affirming services to minors after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion in 2022 declaring gender-affirming care a form of child abuse.

“Our client is a mandatory reporter of child abuse who reported as a whistleblower to the state of Texas what he saw at his hospital,” said Marcella Burke, Haim’s attorney. “We believe this is the government doing everything it can to pursue a whistleblower. »

In May 2023, Haim shared the documents with Christopher F. Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Today, the U.S. Department of Justice is accusing Haim of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which was passed in an effort to protect patient health information. However, according to Rufo, the documents Haim provided did not contain any information that could “identify any individual.”

“All the documents were actually carefully drafted,” Rufos wrote on June 6.

Just days after Rufo received the documents, Paxton launched an investigation into the hospital for “actively engaging in illegal conduct” by providing gender-affirming care to minors. On Monday, Paxton’s office would not confirm whether that investigation was still active.

In an interview with Fox News last week, Haim said he believed the charges were “politically motivated” because of the federal government’s “commitment to transgender ideology.”

Houston Public Media reached out to Haim, although he did not respond to a request for comment.

Gender Affirming Care in Texas

In February 2022, Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents who sought gender-affirming care for their children shortly after Paxton issued his advisory on this practice. An opinion from the Attorney General is an interpretation of existing law and cannot create “new provisions in the law or correct unintended and undesirable effects of the law,” according to the Texas AG website.

About a month later, Texas Children’s Hospital announced it would suspend its gender-affirming services for minors.

“This action was taken to protect our healthcare professionals and affected families from possible criminal legal ramifications,” the hospital said in a 2022 statement.

However, according to Haim, the hospital secretly continued to provide gender-affirming care to children throughout the following year.

“Over the next year, the frequency of these procedures increased and potentially hundreds of additional children received hormonal interventions to treat gender dysphoria,” Haim wrote earlier this year.

This would have continued until Senate Bill 14 took effect last September. The law prohibits Texans under the age of 18 from accessing medical treatments such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical procedures. Texas Children’s CEO Mark Wallace said the hospital would stop providing gender-affirming care altogether to comply with the new law.

Texas Children’s Hospital did not respond to a request for comment.

Move forward

Haim’s lawyers sent a letter to members of the US Congress in January expressing concerns about the “conduct of this investigation against a whistleblower”, saying the investigation “was based on an easily disproven lie”.

Despite the letter, the charges against Haim remain. According to Burke, they have not seen the federal indictment because it is currently sealed.

For the moment, they are “in the dark about the basis of the accusations made against” Haim.

“We have asked the government to see the indictment, and the government has not produced it yet,” Burke said.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment. More details are expected to be revealed at an arraignment hearing in Houston scheduled for June 17.

“My client is eager to go to trial so his side of the story can be told,” Burke said. “I am confident that this will lead to the right decision.”