El Paso, Texas (AP) – Dr. Hector Granado’s children with diabetes in his El Paso clinics and makes hospital rounds under the shadow of the allegations that have brought his career in danger: the supply of transgender youth.
In which it was assumed that he was first a USA, Texas Granados and two other doctors sued for claims that they violated the prohibition of the state ban on gender -specific care for minors, and called the doctors “spotted” in complaints that were submitted last autumn that were threatened to impose steepener and revoke their medical. He denies the accusations and all three doctors asked the courts to reject the cases.
The cases are a central test to tighten Republican efforts to prevent such treatments, including the executive regulation of President Donald Trump, which would rule out support for the federal care of gender -specific care for adolescent people under the age of 19.
Some hospitals have already started to handle services for pediatric patients. So far, however, Texas has only shown what the punishment of doctors looks like when bans are supposedly broken.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Granados said that he was careful to put the transgender supply before the ban on Texas in 2023. He denied that he continued to prescribe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to pass patients and said he was initially unclear what patients who were not named in the lawsuit was treated too incorrectly.
The other accused doctors – both in Dallas – are temporarily mandatory not to see patients and only practice medicine in research and academic environments.
“Looking at the patient was difficult because they were disappointed what was going on,” said Granados about the end of their care. “But it was something that had to be persecuted because it is the law.”
It is believed that the lawsuits are the first time that a state of laws that prohibit or restrict the gender -known care of minors, prohibit or restrict republicans in 27 countries, including this month in Kansas about the veto of the democratic governor. Although those who have been accused of violating bans are subjected to criminal charges in some states, they are not in Texas.
Nationwide, doctors and managers evaluate transgender health programs in the hospital that have an expanded risk of legal disputes and lose federal financing. For transgender Americans, the climate has narrowed the options for care and fears.
In his second term, Trump quickly initiated a broad indictment against transgender rights, which signed the exploit of schools from the exploit of federal cuddly goods to support students who are socially transferred. Followers say that restrictions protect children in need of protection against a “radical” ideology about gender and irreversible medical decisions.
The Texan lawsuits were made by the Attorney General Ken Paxton, Attorney General, who previously went beyond the borders of the state to start examinations for the treatment of gender -specific treatment.
His office did not respond to inquiries for an interview. At a court hearing on Wednesday, in which the Dallas Doctors were involved, a lawyer in Paxton’s office rejected an opinion and referred questions to the agency’s press office.
“I will fully enforce the law to prevent a doctor from making these dangerous drugs available for children,” said Paxton this month in an explanation.
A practice in El Paso
Granados is one of two pediatric endocrinologists in El Paso, a desert city of around 700,000, in which mountains rise in the distance.
Granados, 48, comes from Ciudad Juarez, the neighboring Mexican city, which spreads south of El Paso. He said that after visiting the medical faculty in Mexico, he completed additional training in New York and Connecticut, but wanted to return to an under -provider region.
He opened a gender clinic at the Health Sciences Center of Texas Tech University Health Sciences in El Paso before starting his own practice in 2019. Before the ban, the treatment of transgender youth was only an expansion of his practice, which also treated adolescent people with diabetes, growth problems and early puberty.
He said he only accepted transgender patients if they had initially received a diagnosis of a gender dysphoria from a psychiatric provider.
“It was no different from anything else a pediatric endocrinologist does,” he said. “It was only the care of children who needed this specific therapy.”
Emiliana Edwards was among them. Now 18 she called Granados an “amazing” caregiver that carefully explained her gender treatment. At her first appointment, after the Republican governor of Texas Greg Abbott had signed the ban in 2023, Edwards said that the room felt different: “As if there were wires everywhere.”
“It felt like we could really talk about nothing, even about the simplest stuff,” she said.
Her mother, Lorena Edwards, said Granados put up with her daughter’s care.
“It was only:” I no longer deliver this care. “And it was made,” she said.
Bring cases to court
In the center of the lawsuits of Texas against Granados are Dr. May Lau and Dr. M. Brett Cooper allegations to prescribe treatment to prescribe the gender of their patients according to the effect of the ban.
In one case, the state accuses Granados of prescribing a 16-year-old testosterone and claims that the gender of the teenager assigned to the patient identifies the patient as male, although the doctor’s documents identify the patients as male. Granados and Lau are also accused of instructing the patients to wait until the ban was available to fill the recipes.
Granados does not deny that he continues to prescribe puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy. He said these treatments were not for gender transition, but for children with endocrine disorders that occur if the hormone level is too high or too low.
He said he had prescribed testosterone for many reasons, even for patients whose testicles do not have to work or had to be removed due to cancer. Others have brain tumors or surgery or radiation in the brain that influence puberty. Patients with early puberty also need puberty blockers, he said.
Lau’s lawyers said that they had always complied with the law and the claims had no earnings. Cooper lawyers did not respond to inquiries about comments.
“This is really part of a greater extremism pattern within the state that even other states have spared from replica,” said Sarah Warbelow, Vice President for Legal for the Human Rights Campaign.
Transgender -growing and adolescent people, according to the Williams Institute, a LGBTQ+ research center at the UCLA School of Law, make up less than 1% of the US population.
Handle elsewhere
Granados’ process was carried out for the end of October. The test data has not yet been determined for Lau and Cooper. While the cases are pending, Lau and Cooper agreed to practice medicine only in research and academic environments and not to see patients.
Neither Lau nor Cooper took part in the hearing on Wednesday in their cases by a judge who should decide where their legal proceedings will be held.
As part of Texas Ban, the State Medical Board of Directors will be instructed to refer the licenses of doctors who have violated the law.
Lorena Edwards said that she saw her daughter thrown during her transition and then descended into melancholy, as laws that were directed with transgender rights.
Emiliana Edwards has switched to the neighboring New Mexico for treatment. What is the gender care legal, but said that attacks on the transgender community have burdened their mental health.
“We are also normal people and we just try to live,” she said.
