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Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser last week joined AGs from seventeen other states in sending a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) criticizing it over its plans to investigate providers of transgender healthcare.
This story was first reported by Assigned Media.
In July, the FTC held a “workshop” laying out broad and baseless accusations that providers who offer trans healthcare are engaged in “fraud.” The federal agency later opened a public comment period, requesting information on how “consumers may have been exposed to false or unsupported claims about ‘gender-affirming care,’” opening the possibility that it will investigate providers under consumer protection law.
This is one part of a series of widespread, multi-pronged attacks against trans people and their healthcare by the Trump administration since the start of this year. The president’s first several weeks in office included an executive order intended to cut off federal funding from hospitals that offer gender-affirming care to minors.
The letter to the FTC, led by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, offers a staunch defense of trans healthcare, while criticizing the agency, which it says has no legal authority to regulate medicine in the first place.
“As explained further herein, our States’ experience is that gender-affirming care, which is supported by every major medical association as medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria, is based on rigorous standards of care and has significant benefits for adolescents and their families. The FTC oversteps its bounds in requesting the information … and seeking to regulate the practice of medicine, which is squarely a police power reserved to the States.”
The letter goes on to highlight the positive results of youth gender-affirming care, including evidence supporting overall benefits for both mental and physical health, the comparatively “tiny” percentage of patients who experience regret after treatment, and the widespread medical consensus on that such healthcare is both safe and effective.
Moreover, the letter argues that the FTC’s use of consumer healthcare law to attack one form of healthcare, based purely on the supposition that there is “debate” about its effectiveness, could have dangerous ripple effects on the entire field of medicine:
“Such a standard would render any medical claim that is the subject of debate—that is, almost any medical claim at all—susceptible to a consumer protection investigation. Imagine if every healthcare advertiser were afraid to make truthful, non-misleading statements about products or treatments for fear that a dissenting view in the marketplace would leave them vulnerable to claims of false advertising.”
“The undersigned States urge the FTC to cease abusing its consumer protection authority and to drop this unlawful investigation,” the letter concludes.
Weiser, who is running to be Colorado’s next governor, has been firm in using his current office to oppose the Trump administration’s attacks on trans people. He recently issued a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of the state’s ban on conversion therapy. He has also sued the Trump administration 35 times, often alongside other attorneys general or governors, with over half of the lawsuits resulting in blocking or freezing of federal policies.
