Texas doctors agree to stop practice after lawsuit over gender care for minors

DALLAS — Two North Texas doctors have agreed to stop practicing medicine on patients after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued them over the state’s ban on providing gender-affirming care to minors.

Paxton also sued a third Texas doctor who is awaiting a trial date.

Paxton sued Dallas doctors May Lau and M. Brett Cooper and an El Paso doctor, Dr. Hector Granados, in October and November, alleging they violated a Texas law that took effect in 2023 that banned healthcare providers from providing gender-affirming care to minors, including prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to facilitate medical transitioning.

The law was challenged in Travis County court but allowed to take effect by the Texas Supreme Court.

In the lawsuit, Paxton alleged Lau, a professor in the Pediatrics Department at UT Southwestern Medical Center and Medical Director of the Adolescent and Young Adult clinic at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, provided gender transition care to at least 21 minor patients and falsified records to misrepresent the purposes of her prescriptions.

Similarly, Paxton alleged Cooper, an assistant professor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern Medical Center and an adolescent medicine physician at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, provided gender transition care to at least 15 patients who were minors and falsified records to hide the purpose of the prescriptions.

Paxton said in a press release Tuesday that he’d reached agreements with Lau and Cooper last month for them to stop practicing medicine on patients and restricting them to practicing medicine in research, administrative and academic settings. The agreements aren’t necessarily permanent, though. They’re in effect until they’re superseded by another court order or terminated by either party.

The other doctor, Dr. Hector Granados, an El Paso pediatric endocrinologist, is temporarily banned from providing certain types of medical care. Last month, a Kaufman County judge granted a temporary injunction banning Granados from prescribing puberty blockers or hormones to minors for gender transitioning.

Paxton noted in his press release that the news comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at blocking gender-affirming care for young people.