Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against a pediatric hospital and a doctor for allegedly prescribing sex change drugs to minors and billing Texas Medicaid.
The lawsuit is against Children’s Health System of Texas, the seventh-largest pediatric hospital in the U.S., and Jason Jarin, a pediatric doctor in the Dallas area. The lawsuit accused the hospital and Jarin, a Division Director at Children’s Health, of billing Texas Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for “gender interventions” for children as young as nine years old. He is also accused of violating state law banning sex change drugs and surgeries for minors, with more than a dozen patients.
“I will use every legal tool available to ensure radical gender activists like Jarin face justice for hurting our kids,” Paxton said in a statement. “This criminal extremist not only permanently harmed children, but he also then defrauded Medicaid and stuck Texas taxpayers with the bill for this insanity. Experimental ‘transition’ procedures on minors are illegal, unethical, and will not be tolerated in Texas.”
The lawsuit accused the hospital and doctor of engaging in a healthcare fraud scheme since 2017 by billing “gender interventions” to Texas Medicaid, which is not legal in the state. The lawsuit alleges they continued to do so after Senate Bill 14 became law in September 2023, which banned sex changes for minors.
Paxton’s complaint further alleges that Children’s Health and Jarin illegally charged patients’ gender claims to Texas Medicaid in order to get those claims paid.
“They did this by falsifying or misrepresenting medical records, prescriptions, and billing submissions to pharmacies, insurers, and Medicaid,” the attorney general’s office said in a press release.
Paxton is seeking more than $1,000,000 in the case, as well as civil penalties against both the hospital and Jarin, and is asking the court to bar them from giving sex change drugs to minors or billing Texas Medicaid for those procedures.
Jarin declined to comment to a local NPR outlet last week. Children’s Health told KERA News that its “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 ongoing legal proceedings, we are unable to comment further at this time,” the statement reads.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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