An ambitious and legally dubious lawsuit filed Tuesday by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier alleges that three medical organizations intentionally misled parents about the benefits of gender-affirming care for children.Uthmeier named the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Endocrine Society in the suit and accused them of conspiring to defraud parents over the risks, limits, and evidence when promoting so called gender-affirming care for children. Related United Kingdom bans puberty blockers indefinitely: Its a death sentence Behind closed doors, they knew the evidence was weak, Uthmeier said in a video announcing the suit. They knew the outcomes were uncertain and the risks very real. Parents were not told the full story. In fact, some parents were told that if they didnt put their kids through permanent, life-altering, sick procedures like double mastectomies and castration, that their child would commit suicide.Despite his rhetoric, such irreversible, bodily, and genital surgeries are rarely ever conducted on minors. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Nonetheless, Uthmeier declared, Children were irrevocably harmed because truth was replaced with political activism. In 2023, @GovRonDeSantis signed legislation to ban so-called "gender-affirming care" for kids. Now its time for accountability!Today, my office sued @wpath, @AmerAcadPeds, and @TheEndoSociety for mutilating kids and misleading families. pic.twitter.com/RrbIfYEFEq Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) December 9, 2025The 75-page complaint filed in St. Lucie County, Florida alleges that the defendants claims about gender-affirming care for youth are false and misleading, and invokes the Florida RICO Act to assert the medical groups have engaged in racketeering (an ongoing criminal enterprise to make money, often involving organized crime, threats, and violence). The suit asks the court to declare the organizations promotion of gender-affirming care an unfair trade practice, levy large fines on the defendants, and bar them from advertising the safety, reversibility, or efficacy or pediatric sex interventions.The lawsuit labels the organizations actions reprehensible and immoral and an effort to sell lucrative surgeries and drugs that irreversibly mutilate and chemically alter childrens bodies without providing any credible medical benefit. The complaint relies on the debunked Cass Review commissioned by the U.K. government in 2024 for its assertion that gender-affirming care is harmful to children. The report was widely rebuked by medical organizations, but nonetheless provided the basis for an indefinite ban on puberty blockers for minors in the U.K.In July, the Department of Justice issued multiple subpoenas to gender-affirming care providers across the country with similar claims that clinics providing support for trans youth are rife with healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.As well as the Cass Review, the politically motivated suit references other debunked science to make the attorney generals case, including claims drawn from the discredited Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria hypothesis, a belief that trans-identifying youth were a rarity a decade ago and diagnoses of gender dysphoria have skyrocketed in recent years. Trans identification is a form of mass hysteria and a social contagion brought on by social media, smartphones, a lack of in-person interaction, and other societal ills, according to the suit.A long list of respected medical organizations in addition to the named defendants have asserted the efficacy of gender-affirming care for youth. The American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, the World Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry agree that gender-affirming care is evidence-based and medically necessary for trans minors well-being. Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.