Charges dropped against US doctor who leaked information about minors’ transgender care

Federal prosecutors have dropped charges against a surgeon in Texas who was accused of obtaining and sharing private medical information about gender-transition-related treatments for minors at one of the largest children’s hospitals in the country.

The surgeon, Dr. Eithan Haim, was indicted last May in US District Court in Houston on four counts of obtaining, under false pretenses, personal medical information from the online system at Texas Children’s Hospital. He requested access to the hospital’s record database in 2023, two years after he last worked there, claiming that he needed the information to provide “adult care services.”

The doctor took the health care information of children who had received transition-related services and disclosed that information to a conservative activist, Christopher Rufo. Rufo then published an article saying the hospital was continuing to provide transgender care to minors after it had announced an end to the practice.

Haim, 34, who has acknowledged disclosing the records, pleaded not guilty because he did not think he had done anything wrong, he said in a telephone interview Saturday from his suburban Dallas home. He called himself a whistleblower and said he had redacted the patients’ records to hide any identifiable information.

Prosecutors did not provide an explanation for dropping the charges, and Haim said he was relieved and surprised that they had done so. He said he had President Donald Trump to thank for it, “100%.”

“He’s my man,” he said.

Texas Children’s Hospital said in an emailed statement that it would “defer to and respect” the prosecutors’ decision, which was announced Friday.

The dismissal of the charges was yet another assault on transgender rights, especially in Texas, said Johnathan Gooch, a spokesperson for Equality Texas, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group.

Over the past few years, the state has enacted laws targeting transgender people, including one that bars transgender athletes from playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams from kindergarten through college. Those laws have had severe consequences for the trans community, advocacy groups say.

In states that enact anti-trans legislation, the rate of suicide attempts by transgender and nonbinary young people increases, according to a study cited by Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ suicide prevention nonprofit.

“I think this whole incident with the exposure of private medical data seriously eroded a lot of trust between LGBTQ people in Texas and their doctors, which is such an important relationship,” Gooch said. “I think it is alarming to see an implicit endorsement of anti-trans vigilantism from the Justice Department. If this is permissible, what else is permissible?”

In the first week of his new term, Trump has moved to dismantle many protections for transgender and other LGBTQ+ people that were established under President Joe Biden.

Trump has ordered that government institutions recognize only the sex that a person was assigned at birth, and that it be either male or female. He instructed federal agencies to bar transgender women from “intimate single-sex spaces” such as women’s prisons.

An intense debate over whether to provide gender-transition treatment to minors is continuing across the country, including in states like Tennessee, which enacted a ban on the treatments that is now being considered by the US Supreme Court. Arguments in the case were heard in December.

In Texas, gender-transition care has been contentious for years. The state is one of at least 26 since 2021 to have enacted partial or total bans on the treatments for minors.

In 2023, the state prohibited doctors from giving puberty blockers, hormone therapies or transition surgery to patients younger than 18. Doctors who violate that law risk losing their medical licenses, and health insurers are barred from covering the cost of the treatments.

The measure was upheld last year by the Texas Supreme Court. And in October, the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton sued a Dallas pediatrician whom he accused of providing gender-transition care to minors in violation of the law. The case is pending.

For Haim, the decision to leak private medical records to an activist who would publish the information was an easy one, he said, because he felt that the hospital and its doctors were harming children and that the public needed to know.

When Haim first heard that his colleagues at Texas Children’s Hospital were treating transgender children, gender-transition care was legal in the state. But in early 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the state’s child protection agency to investigate youth transgender care as “child abuse,” and he said that anyone failing to report a case of a child being given that care would face criminal penalties.

Weeks later, to protect itself and its patients from legal claims, Texas Children’s Hospital announced that it would stop providing gender-transition care for minors.

Haim said he now was sure the Trump administration would bar the care nationally, so “the most radical surgeries finally will come to an end, and these people can get the help they need to live normal lives.” He said he believed that people who think they are transgender just need mental health care, and not puberty-blocking drugs or surgery.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, however, says those treatments can be necessary to treat gender dysphoria, which is the psychological distress that can occur when a person’s body doesn’t match their gender identity. The organization has ordered a review of the available data and research on transgender care, so that it can update its guidelines for the practice.

Genital surgery for adolescents is exceedingly rare, but top surgical procedures have become more common for older teenagers.

After Haim was indicted last summer, some Republican politicians took an interest in the case. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas sent a letter to Alamdar S. Hamdani, who was the US attorney for the Southern District of Texas at the time, expressing concern that the case might be politically motivated.

Haim said he discussed the case last summer with Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., at a meeting of Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy group that has promoted anti-transgender legislation.

Regardless of the reason the charges against him were dropped, Haim called the development “a miracle.” If he had been convicted, he would have faced up to 10 years in prison.