
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) released newly obtained documents from its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that include internal emails from Assistant Secretary for Health “Rachel” Levine and his team. These emails illustrate the Biden Administration’s conscious decision to continue pushing the harmful practice of child transgender surgeries and to assist in stepping up HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) investigations in Texas following the state’s ban of such medical treatments on children in March 2022.
AFL obtained these documents through litigation against HHS to enforce a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Assistant Secretary Levine’s communications regarding pediatric “transgender clinics,” otherwise known as the genital mutilation and sterilization of America’s children.
AFL previously released documents showing how Levine has worked behind the scenes with other advocates on “gender affirming care” access in other states.
In October 2021, Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) appointed Catherine Gordon as the Pediatrician-in-Chief. Gordon has publicly defended the medical transitioning of children, stating that she worked under the founder of the first children’s transgender clinic in the United States and allegedly saw how puberty blockers saved the lives of children. Notably, Gordon received funding support from the National Institute of Health (NIH) for this article in which she argues that medical transitioning “[has] the potential” to lower the risk of depression and self-harm.
On March 8, 2022, TCH announced that it would stop providing medical transitions for children. Shortly thereafter, Gordon resigned in April 2022—only six months after her appointment to TCH––following Governor Abbott’s directive to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate any instances of children being subjected to sex transitions. Interestingly, HHS made an announcement the same day as Governor Abbott, indicating that HHS would investigate cases involving discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.”
According to documents produced to AFL from HHS, Assistant Secretary Levine and Gordon had several email exchanges in the months following Gordon’s departure from TCH. On July 1, 2022, Gordon emailed Assistant Secretary Levine to introduce Priya Verghese, Chief of nephrology at Northwestern and Lurie’s Children’s Hospital in Chicago.
On July 5, 2022, Assistant Secretary Levine emailed Gordon to thank her for the introduction and that he wanted to set up a call to touch base with Gordon, either on Zoom on “offline.” After Gordon confirmed, Assistant Secretary Levine replied that his Chief of Staff would reach out to set something up.
On July 13, 2022, Kelly Cure (HHS staff) emailed Assistant Secretary Levine that Verghese requested Assistant Secretary Levine to be the keynote speaker at a September conference at Houston Medical Center in Texas on “barriers to health care and health research for trans children.” Additionally, Cure told Assistant Secretary Levine in the same email that a meeting to reconnect with Gordon has been scheduled for August 10.
After reconnecting, Gordon emailed Assistant Secretary Levine and thanked him for the good conversation and for his “incredible support.” Further, Gordon stated that she would “keep [him] posted on next steps…”. Assistant Secretary Levine replied and asked to be kept up to date, signing the email as “[y]our friend, Rachel.”
Exactly one month later, Gordon received an appointment to be the Clinical Director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the NIH, which is under HHS. On October 31, 2023, the NIH Publication titled “The Catalyst” posted a piece regarding Gordon’s appointment. Surprisingly, the article failed to mention that Gordon was the Pediatrician-in-Chief at Texas Children’s Hospital, nor is there any mention of her advocacy of medical transitions for children.
However, the article does highlight Gordon’s “mission to raise awareness about bone health during those critical developmental years,” and that “she brings to the NIH her own lab that has focused on discovering modifiable factors in childhood and adolescence that optimize bone development.” The article further stated that, “[a]t the NIH, another focus for Gordon will be developing tools that can be used to noninvasively, safely, and quickly evaluate the skeletal health of children and adolescents. To that end, [National Institute of Child Health and Human Development] has purchased a high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed-tomography scanner that enables bone density and skeletal strength assessments of the peripheral skeleton.”
Ultimately, some medical professionals continue to push these harmful, life-altering treatments on children with the ongoing support of Assistant Secretary Levine and others in the Biden HHS. According to emails as recent as March 2023, Assistant Secretary Levine and his staff have shared and dismissed correspondence containing complaints of the harm caused by gender transitions. Assistant Secretary Levine’s staff seemed to only care about these complaints “in case [they come] back to [them] some way later.”
However, these documents indicate that HHS and Assistant Secretary Levine have a plan to combat those who disagree with their push to medically transition children. In November 2022, Assistant Secretary Levine and his staff forwarded a related complaint from a physician in Texas to HHS OCR after the physician noted that Assistant Secretary Levine “gave [his] word that HHS would investigate complaints to the OCR.”
Secretary Levine then forwarded that email to Kathy Oh at HHS to which Kathy Oh replied, “I’ll send to OCR. Thanks.”
Overall, these emails provide further insight into the Biden Administration’s extreme efforts to use the weight of the federal government to undermine state protections of the health and well-being of America’s children. AFL will continue to fight HHS’s radical actions and work to stop their harmful, destructive agenda, especially now that the Biden Administration is putting action behind its threats and indicting doctors who blow the whistle on these harmful practices.
Statement from America First Legal Senior Advisor Ian Prior:
“While the rest of the world is pulling back on the inhumane practice of child experimentation, the Biden Administration is plowing full steam ahead and the Department of ‘Health and Human Services’ is leading the way. Whether it’s putting transgender activist doctors in high-ranking positions in the National Institute of Health or prosecuting doctors who blow the whistle on these barbaric medical treatments, the Biden Administration is weaponizing the federal government to destroy any dissent or challenge to child mutilation and sterilization. America First Legal is committed to ending these practices and ensuring that history remembers those who perpetrated these crimes against humanity.“ said Ian Prior.
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Photo credit: Adobe Stock Images / Tan