For Immediate Press Release

June 22, 2026

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On June 17, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with four states, sued the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (where WPATH is headquartered). 

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According to the FTC’s press release, the suit alleges that:

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[WPATH] has provided the means for medical providers to make false and unsubstantiated claims to parents in order to sell pediatric medical transition services.

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DIAG welcomes this development. 

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DIAG is working to bring the Democratic Party back to liberal values: women's rights, free speech, and evidence based medicine. The sex trait modification—or "gender" medicine—industry lacks evidence of benefit, and has betrayed the trust of all those who care about protecting children and vulnerable adults from harm. Body modification should not be marketed as a medically sound solution to distress. Clinicians are wrongly profiting by pathologizing normal adolescent development, and should be held accountable.

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The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the FTC, Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas. The complaint is publicly available. It is a damning indictment of what WPATH has done to children, young adults, and families. 

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As DIAG board member Kara Dansky explained in her 2023 book The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls:

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The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) started out as the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA), founded in 1979 by a man named Paul Allen Walker. At its origins, WPATH was basically a merger of the Janus Information Facility (JIF), described as a “referral service for transsexuals affiliated with the University of Texas” in Galveston Texas, the Harry Benjamin Foundation, and the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), a non-profit philanthropic organization funded and controlled by Reed Erickson (a woman born Rita Mae Erickson, sometimes referred to as Rita Alma Erickson, who had undergone what was then called a “sex-change” operation conducted by Harry Benjamin himself). The HBIGDA became WPATH in 2007. Its current president is a man named Marci (Mark) Bowers. Bowers brags on his website that he is a “pioneer in the field of Gender Affirmation Surgery,” that he has performed more than 2,250 vaginoplasties and 3,900 “gender-affirming surgeries” overall, and that he has been named the “Transgender Surgery Rock Star,” the “Georgia O’Keefe of Genitalia,” and the “Beyonce of Bottom Surgery.” He has also served on the board of GLAAD.

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Throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, there emerged a growing field of research in the U.S. into what was then termed “transsexualism.” Earlier in the twentieth century, doctors in Europe had been experimenting with the idea that people could “change sex.” In her 2021 book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, Helen Joyce tells the story of Einar Wegener, a man who very much wanted to be transformed into a woman, and Magnus Hirschfeld, the doctor who operated on him. Hirschfeld had already been performing genital surgeries, but Joyce explains that for Wegener, Hirschfeld wanted to try something more ambitious: a transformation of body chemistry as well as genitals. Joyce discusses how the doctors involved in all this seemed to believe that it was possible to “change sex.” By the 1960s, however, the American sexologists mentioned above who were looking at what they termed “transsexualism” knew there was no such thing as “changing sex.” For them, it was always about medicalizing identity.

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A lot of this is grounded in the work of Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who is known for research on child sexuality. Hirschfeld (the European doctor who operated on Wegener) knew Harry Benjamin, and it was through Kinsey that Benjamin would become interested in what he referred to as “transsexualism.” By the late 1960s, Benjamin was working directly with Dr. John Money, who ran the Johns Hopkins University Gender Clinic, where he somewhat famously performed surgery on a male infant named David Reimer to make the child appear to be female, when in fact the child had undergone a botched circumcision. Reimer would eventually learn the truth that he was male when he did not experience female puberty (because, of course, he didn’t), and after a tumultuous young adulthood, he tragically took his own life at the age of thirty-five.

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It is unclear exactly how much money the EEF contributed to all of this work on “transsexualism,” but the EEF claims that Erickson’s businesses eventually developed into a personal fortune estimated to be over $40 million. That is a lot of money today and was a lot more in the sixties and seventies. According to the EEF’s website, the foundation “funded many early research efforts, including the creation of the Harry Benjamin Foundation, and the opening of the first North American gender clinic at Johns Hopkins.” The EEF sponsored public addresses, educational films, radio and television appearances, and newspaper articles bringing “transsexualism” to the attention of the public. In addition, the EEF also published informative quarterly newsletters, educational pamphlets, and books. “Trans” is, and has always been, big business.

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In 2022, WPATH announced the release of its Standards of Care Version 8 (SOC-8). SOC-8 completely removed any recommended age guidelines for the administration of puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones, and so-called “sex-change” surgeries for minors. This move was suggested by the former Biden Administration Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Admiral Rachel (Richard) Levine. 

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SOC-8 also introduced, for the first time, the concept of a “eunuch gender identity.” As explained by the magazine Reduxx, this was done in connection with two doctors who were active in both WPATH and an online forum called “The Eunuch Archive” (a castration fetish group). 

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In 2016, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy may have become one of the first practitioners to advocate for WPATH to lower its recommendations regarding age limits for genital surgeries. That year, she posted on the WPATH Facebook page: “Hi friends, wondering if WPATH SOC 8 might be changing guidelines around genital surgery in trans young women younger than 18? Here’s the issue: these girls are blocked at early puberty, so by high school they having [sic] been living and presenting as their authentic selves, but are forced to navigate high school with 11 y/o ‘male’ genitals until 18. I have a handful of girls (many more coming up) whose lives are on hold because of this. They are ready, their parents are ready to support after care, they have strong mental health support, but the insurance won’t cover because of the WPATH recs. Thoughts?” This is what she was saying: she has intentionally arrested the natural puberty of some number of boys and essentially created a cohort of young men whose penises and testicles have not been allowed to develop and now, having created this cohort of young men with undeveloped genitals, it was necessary for WPATH to reduce its recommended age limit so that she could have these young men’s genitals removed entirely. 

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According to the complaint:

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Through this lawsuit, the FTC is taking action to stop the unconscionable harm inflicted by WPATH’s ongoing furnishing of the means necessary for its members and other clinicians to make deceptive claims about the necessity, safety and efficacy of pediatric medical transition drugs, surgeries, and other treatments on children and their parents. The FTC has received hundreds of reports from consumers of medical transition services, including patients and parents, as well as healthcare professionals. In particular, numerous parent and patient declarants have complained to the FTC about serious medical complications arising from medical transition services—and that the risks and side effects that they incurred were often not, or not adequately, disclosed to them. For example, one consumer complained that nobody disclosed “that taking cross-sex hormones and undergoing major surgery at 14 years old could leave me with pelvic floor dysfunction and urinary incontinence, problems I have to manage now as a young adult. I'm only 20 years old. They didn't tell me that these complications are common enough to be known risks, and yet they were hidden from me at an age where I didn't even understand what these terms meant, let alone the impact they would have on my daily life." 

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The complaint frames the arguments as follows: 

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BACKGROUND

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Transition doctors founded WPATH to promote the transition service industry’s financial interests after losing academic support and insurance coverage for medical transition services. 

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Through SOC-8, WPATH fully embraces the medical transition of children.

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WPATH’S DECEPTIVE PRACTICES

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WPATH developed SOC-8 without regard for scientific protocols. 

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WPATH knows that its recommendations are not supported by scientific evidence or a medical consensus. 

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Independent reviews and guidelines reinforce that WPATH’s recommendations and claims regarding pediatric medical transition are unsupported by competent and reliable scientific evidence.

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WPATH falsely claims that pediatric medical transition is “lifesaving” and, in so doing, misrepresents the risks and benefits of pediatric medical transition.

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WPATH OPERATES FOR ITS MEMBERS PROFIT.

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WPATH HAS PROVIDED TO CLINICIANS THE MEANS BY WHICH THEY DECEIVE CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS INTO PURCHASING PEDIATRIC MEDICAL TRANSITION SERVICES.

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The complaint goes on to explain that WPATH has caused material harm to people in the plaintiff states.

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It alleges concrete violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Alaska Consumer Protection Act, the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, the Nebraska Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

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The FTC is asking the court to:

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• Order WPATH to stop violating every federal and state law mentioned;

• Award the states civil penalties, attorneys’ fees and costs, and other appropriate relief; and

• Award any additional relief as the court determines to be just and proper.

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WPATH has done untold damage to minors and vulnerable adults, and they have done it for profit. It is high time it is held accountable for the harms it has caused. DIAG welcomes this lawsuit by the FTC. 

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Media Liaison: Martha Wexler

martha@di-ag.org