Dr. Hector Granados felt puzzled when he first heard of the allegations. The El Paso pediatrician had just finished his hospital rounds early in the morning last fall when he received a call from a friend. The friend saw in the news that Texas was suing Granados.
The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a petition Oct. 29 claiming Granados had prescribed puberty blockers and hormones to minors for gender transition – health care the state made illegal beginning Sept. 1, 2023. The court filing accuses Granados of providing gender-affirming care under the false pretense of treating precocious puberty.
Paxton filed the lawsuit in Kaufman County near Dallas, about 650 miles east of El Paso, where one of the 21 patients in the court filing is said to reside. Granados is one of three doctors Paxton sued last year for allegedly providing gender-affirming care to minors.
Granados denied the allegations.
“I was always respectful of the law and I will continue to be because we follow what it specifically mandates,” Granados said. “You’re not able to provide transgender care to minors. We stopped.”
The AG’s office didn’t respond to El Paso Matters’ requests for comment, but called Granados a “radical gender activist” in the lawsuit.
Granados told El Paso Matters he stopped providing gender-affirming care after Texas Senate Bill 14 passed in May 2023 because he didn’t want to risk getting his medical license revoked. He began informing parents and discharging his transgender patients prior to the law going into effect. Since then, he’s continued to see youths for other concerns.
[…]
In a response filed Nov. 25, Bracken filed a motion to move the case from Kaufman to El Paso, and a motion to dismiss the case.
All of the prescriptions cited in the lawsuit were filled in El Paso, according to the state’s court filing. Granados resides and works in El Paso, splitting his time between his three clinics, as well as El Paso Children’s Hospital and the Hospitals of Providence.
Scheduling out-of-town court appearances would be difficult when Granados is on call three weeks every month for neonatal, emergency and pediatric intensive care, Bracken said. Granados would have to make multiple two-day trips to Kaufman to appear in court, taking time away from the patients who depend on him, he said.
See here for the background. The story says Paxton has filed three such lawsuits. I’m aware of two – here’s the post I did on the first one. A little googling around, and here’s the third one:
Paxton accuses Dr. M. Brett Cooper, an associate professor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern Medical Center who also practiced at Children’s Medical Center Dallas, of prescribing various levels of testosterone cypionate to 15 patients between the ages of 14 and 17. Most patients listed in the lawsuit were between 16 and 17 years old.
In the 34-page lawsuit filed in Collin County, Paxton calls Cooper a “scofflaw” and “radical gender activist” — a reprisal of similar labels he used in his first two lawsuits against Dr. May Lau of UT Southwestern and Dr. Hector Granados of El Paso.
Paxton has said the state “is cracking down” on doctors who provide treatment to children experiencing gender dysphoria despite the state’s ban, which took effect Sept. 1, 2023. The law calls for the Texas Medical License to revoke the medical licenses of physicians who violate it.
Paxton said Cooper has prescribed hormone treatment to patients as recently as Sept. 25, and that patients filled prescriptions as recently as Oct. 8.
“Despite the enactment of the law, Cooper continues to prescribe and distribute cross-sex hormones to his minor patients for the purposes of transitioning their biological sex or affirming their belief that their gender identity or sex is consistent with their biological sex,” he wrote in the suit.
Paxton also accuses Cooper of misrepresenting diagnoses and billing codes through diagnoses such as “precocious puberty” or “endocrine disorder” to treat patients for gender dysphoria.
That last bit should be very concerning to everyone, because precocious puberty is a real thing. In the same way that the abortion ban has put a lot of women’s health in jeopardy because they are unable to get timely care during a miscarriage, children with precocious puberty are going to suffer from Paxton’s heavyhandedness. What does he care? Just a little collateral damage in service of the larger goal. I don’t have much faith in what the courts will do with this, but this is where we are.