Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has initiated a lawsuit against a children’s hospital and a physician, claiming they improperly prescribed sex change medications to minors and charged Texas Medicaid for these services.
This lawsuit targets Children’s Health System of Texas, which ranks as the seventh largest children’s hospital in the U.S., and Dr. Jason Jalin, a pediatrician from the Dallas area. The allegations include billing for “gender intervention” provided to a 9-year-old child, as well as treating over a dozen other patients in ways that violate state laws against administering sex-change drugs or surgeries for minors.
“I will use every legal tool available to ensure that radical gender activists like Djarin are brought to justice for their harm to children,” Paxton stated. “These criminal extremists are not only causing permanent harm to children but also defrauding Medicaid and shifting the financial burden of this nonsense onto Texas taxpayers. Such experimental ‘transition’ procedures for minors are illegal, unethical, and will not be tolerated in Texas.”
The complaint alleges that the hospital and its doctors have been involved in a fraudulent scheme since 2017, billing Texas Medicaid for procedures categorized as “gender interference,” which has been deemed illegal in the state. This practice supposedly continued even after Senate Bill 14 was enacted in September 2023, which prohibits gender reassignment treatments for minors.
Paxton’s allegations suggest that Children’s Health and Jalin have unlawfully billed Texas Medicaid for claims tied to patient genders.
“They did this by falsifying or misrepresenting medical records, prescriptions, and billing submissions to pharmacies, insurance companies, and Medicaid,” the attorney general’s office detailed in a press statement.
In this lawsuit, Paxton seeks over $1 million in damages and civil penalties against both the hospital and Jalin. He is also requesting that the court bars them from providing sex-change drugs to minors or billing Texas Medicaid for such treatments.
Dr. Jalin declined to provide a comment to a local NPR station last week. Children’s Health responded to KERA News, stating, “Our top priority is the health and well-being of the patients and families we serve.”
“We comply with all applicable local, state, and federal health care laws. Due to the ongoing legal process, we are unable to comment further at this time,” the statement added.
