The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing a prominent transgender healthcare group for allegedly making false and deceptive claims that misled parents about the risks of transgender medical interventions for children — an issue U.S. Catholic bishops urged them to investigate.
In the complaint, the FTC alleges the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) disregarded evidence and made unsubstantiated claims about cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and surgeries that alter "sex traits" to feminize boys and masculinize girls.
Part of the complaint focuses on WPATH's standards of care guidelines for children, which do not set minimum age suggestions for most services. Some surgical interventions include chest surgery, which removes the healthy breasts of girls or adds prosthetic breasts onto boys, and sterilizing surgery on reproductive organs to make the person resemble the opposite sex.
The FTC alleges WPATH's avoidance of recommended age minimums was based on external pressure, including from former President Joe Biden's administration. It alleges WPATH ignored its own reviews of scientific evidence and falsely asserted its final recommendations were based on "rigorous scientific procedures and expert consensus."
In the complaint, the FTC points to email exchanges that were unveiled in court documents in 2024. They show that, in 2021, WPATH's original draft guidance for children included suggested age minimums for certain procedures, but they were removed in the published document amid pressure from Adm. Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender four-star officer who was Biden's assistant secretary for health.
Internal emails show WPATH employees saying Levine warned that age-based guidance could be used to justify restrictions on gender transitions for children in Republican-led states. They also show employees noting that setting recommended age minimums is a "consensus-based" guideline before WPATH ultimately removed them from the draft.
One internal email pointed to the lack of evidence for their final published suggestions: "Now that we have reviewed the evidence, we are painfully aware of the gaps in the literature and the kinds of research that are needed to support our recommendations."
In addition to its failure to set minimum age recommendations, the FTC also accuses WPATH of misleading parents by referring to these services as lifesaving despite an absence of evidence that the medicine and surgeries reduce the risk of suicide.
The complaint alleges that WPATH presented these services "as the only alternative to a child's death." It points to examples of clinicians using this rhetoric, which includes providers asking a parent, "Would you rather have a live daughter or a dead son?" The complaint alleges that this false dichotomy induces the purchase of pediatric transition services.
It notes WPATH's membership mostly consists of doctors who profit from the services. It asks the federal court to impose civil penalties on WPATH and to order compliance with consumer protection laws.
"When an organization provides guidance designed to mislead families about the risks, benefits, or medical consensus behind a treatment, it undermines trust in those responsible for providing medical care," FTC Commissioner Mark R. Meador said in a statement.
"Our action today is a straightforward application of the law to ensure that families receive accurate, evidence-based information as they seek to make some of the most important healthcare decisions for their children," he said.
In response to the lawsuit, WPATH issued a statement calling the complaint "baseless" and saying the FTC "is not a medical provider and has no place interfering with the process of individualized medical decision-making."
"The FTC also does not have any jurisdiction over WPATH and its noncommercial speech. The state claims have similar factual and legal flaws," it added.
WPATH accused the FTC of "pure retaliation" to wage a "targeted campaign to undermine gender-affirming care by attacking the First Amendment rights and the independence of professional medical organizations."
Concerns of bishops
In October 2025, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops submitted a public comment urging the FTC to investigate "false or unsupported claims" in advertisements for pediatric gender transition services.
The bishops expressed concern that parents were not informed on risks and were being told the services are "lifesaving." The statement also commented on the spiritual dimension, warning against a "rejection of our God-given bodies."
Joseph Meaney, senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC), told EWTN News that WPATH operates as "more of a pro-transgender activist organization than an objective healthcare association."
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a neuroscientist and senior ethicist at NCBC, warned that "when a group of scientists ventures to offer statements about values or ethics, the general public makes the broader assumption that they are offering an 'objective' or 'scientifically informed' viewpoint when in fact it may be little more than raw advocacy masquerading as scientific truth."
"Science itself lacks qualifications to fully address and answer some of the most important ethical questions of our day, especially those related to the dignity of the human person," he said. "Even though scientists are sometimes treated as if they are a new class of 'elite high priests' in our society, they remain just as human as the rest of us and just as subject to the siren calls of various ideologies and misguided viewpoints."
