Texas Children's Hospital opens nation's first detransition clinic under settlement
Texas Children's Hospital has opened what state officials describe as the first detransition clinic in the United States, under a $10 million settlement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Texas Children's Hospital has opened what Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton describes as the nation's first detransition clinic, a facility created under a $10 million settlement between the hospital and the state. Paxton announced the opening on Tuesday, framing it as a remedy for patients who have sought to reverse gender-transition treatments.
The settlement was reached in May and finalized in August. Under its terms, the hospital agreed to pay $10 million to resolve government claims and separately to establish and fund a detransition clinic. The state alleged that the hospital improperly billed Texas Medicaid for gender-transition treatments. The $10 million payment resolves claims brought under the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act and the federal False Claims Act, according to Paxton's office.
According to Paxton's office, the clinic provides detransition-related medical care to patients through age 21, along with detransition-related obstetric and gynecologic care to patients older than 21. In a statement, Paxton said that the clinic would continue to provide care and support for people he described as victims of what he called the radical left's gender ideology. "Together, we will protect our children and defeat the dangerous ideology that has inflicted irreversible harm on innocent kids," he said.
A spokesperson for the hospital told Fox News Digital that patients and families remain at the center of its work and that the clinic formalizes multidisciplinary services the hospital already delivers. The spokesperson said that care may be delivered in multiple locations depending on individual needs and that all services fall within the hospital's existing licensure and scope. Listed services include endocrinology, surgery, primary care, fertility counseling, psychiatry, psychology, social work and case management, and speech pathology.
The hospital said the clinic is operational and that it is complying with the settlement agreement. It also said it is actively triaging prospective patients through its established intake process, but has not yet held clinical appointments with patients. The spokesperson cited patient privacy as the reason it could not share further information about those seeking care.
Under the settlement, the hospital must fully fund services provided through the detransition clinic for its first five years, so that patients receive them at no cost. It must also publicize the clinic on its website.
The announcement comes as Paxton campaigns in the 2026 Texas Senate race. President Donald Trump campaigned for Paxton's Senate bid in Corpus Christi and Lubbock on the same day. The Trump administration has also moved against initiatives related to transgender people in recent months; in August, Trump announced that his administration would stop funding gender transition surgeries for minors through Medicaid. A Fox News poll published on October 21 found Democratic candidate James Talarico and Paxton tied at 49% each among likely voters in Texas.
Paxton's office did not respond to a request for comment. Do No Harm, a medical advocacy organization critical of gender-transition treatments for minors, estimates that 13,994 minors received gender-transition-related medical interventions between 2019 and 2023, based on its analysis of insurance claims data.
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