A teenager has filed a lawsuit against a healthcare company, Kaiser Permanente, and the doctors who prescribed puberty-blocking medication when she was 12 years old, and later performed a double mastectomy surgery to remove her healthy breasts when she was just 13. The lawsuit accuses them of “intentional fraud and concealment.”
Attorney Harmeet Dhillon is representing Layla Jane, an 18-year-old detransitioner who alleges that she was coerced into making life-altering medical decisions without being fully informed of the risks and important information, such as the rate of desistence for childhood gender dysphoria and that this amounted to intentional fraud and concealment, the Daily Wire reports.
“Layla immediately started puberty blockers and testosterone at age 12, and had a double mastectomy at age 13,” the legal letter says, according to the outlet.
“Two of Layla’s initial providers advised that per Kaiser’s official policies, Layla could not start cross-sex hormones until she was 16 and advised that surgery was not permissible until age 18,” the letter notes further. “But, soon thereafter, Layla ended up in the hands of Dr. [Susanne E.] Watson, Dr. [Lisa Kristine] Taylor, and Dr. [Winnie Mao Yiu] Tong.
“These doctors immediately approved Layla for cross-sex hormones and a double mastectomy at ages 12-13, without performing an adequate evaluation and treatment of Layla’s extensive mental health co-morbidities,” the letter continues.
“I don’t think I should have been allowed to change my sex before I could legally consent to have sex,” Layla said during a Fox News appearance last week with Dhillon. “I don’t think I’m better off for the experience, and I think transition just completely added fuel to the fire that was my pre-existing conditions.”
The letter claims that the doctors “pushed” her and her parents down the “transition path, engaging in intentional, malicious, and oppressive concealment of important information and false representations.”
“This concealment included, among other things, the lack of adequate clinical research supporting this treatment, particularly for 12-year-old girls; the existence of high-quality clinical research contra-indicating treatment; the 80-90% desistence rates for childhood gender dysphoria; and the significant possibility of detransition and regret,” the letter says, according to the outlet.
“The fraudulent misrepresentations included, among other things, falsely representing that Layla’s gender dysphoria and co-morbid mental health symptoms would not resolve without imitation sex change transition, falsely representing that Layla presented an increased risk of suicide unless she transitioned, and presenting Layla’s parents with the false dilemma that: ‘would they rather have a live son, or a dead daughter?’” it asked.
Dhillon is also representing Chloe Cole, 18, who has undergone detransitioning. She announced the filing of the first official lawsuit in the United States in February against the hospital and related medical group that enabled her medical transition while she was still a minor.
Her suit was filed against the Permanente Medical Group, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals. The lawsuit claims that the medical group and its affiliated institutions provided chemical and surgical sex change treatments to Chloe Cole during her teenage years, between the ages of 13 and 16, and were medically negligent in doing so.
