The Verdict That May Bring Down the Trans Industry Targeting Children

It finally happened. After years of doctors, activists, and bureaucrats steamrolling common sense in the name of “gender-affirming care,” a jury in New York has dealt what could be the first real blow to the entire transgender industry targeting children. On Friday, a jury in Westchester County awarded 22-year-old Fox Varian $2 million after finding that both the psychologist and plastic surgeon who approved her double mastectomy when she was 16 committed malpractice. The verdict may not be massive in dollar terms, but it’s a landmark. For the first time in the United States, a detransitioner sat through a full civil trial, told her story, and won.

Varian’s story is heartbreaking but familiar. Like thousands of others, she was the victim of a system that promised quick fixes instead of careful, evidence-based medicine. So-called gender clinics across America were waving through confused kids for life‑altering surgeries at a shocking pace.

In 2019, Varian, at just 16 years old, under the guidance of adults who should have known better, was fast‑tracked into a double mastectomy — which the medical establishment euphemizes as “top surgery” — after identifying as a boy.

Now, years later, Fox Varian, now 22, is living with the permanent consequences of what those adults told her was “affirming care.” Varian is part of a growing cohort of “detransitioners,” young adults coming forward to say they were pushed into irreversible decisions as confused teenagers, that the transgender industry pretends don’t exist. That will be much harder to do in the wake of this verdict.

The defendants—clinical psychologist Kenneth Einhorn and plastic surgeon Simon Chin—were found to have “departed from the standard of care.” In plain English, that means they didn’t do their jobs.

What Varian’s lawsuit exposed is the reckless haste of an industry that expanded at lightning speed, fueled by profit, ideology, and fearmongering. Her mother even testified that she initially opposed the surgery but gave in because she was warned her child might commit suicide if denied the procedure.

The New York Times actually reported on this phenomenon back in 2022.

To make the urgent case that medical interventions are necessary, some providers started emphasizing the risk of suicide among trans kids. The rate of suicide attempts among them in the previous year is terribly high — nearly 35 percent in a 2017 survey of high school students by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compared with single digits for the cisgender population. A 2020 study of trans patients of all ages, over more than four decades, at the Amsterdam clinic, found that deaths by suicide, which are fortunately rare, though still higher than for the general Dutch population, seem to “occur during every stage of transitioning.”

In the overheated political moment, however, parents were getting the terrifying message that if they didn’t quickly agree to puberty suppressants or hormone treatments, their children would be at severe risk. Many parents told me they’d heard the mantra: “It’s better to have a live son than a dead daughter.”

That emotional blackmail has become standard operating procedure. Parents are constantly told it’s surgery or suicide, as if those are the only two options. Doctors and psychologists who should know better have repeated this script for years, often with tragic results. This verdict could change everything.

The ruling doesn’t outlaw transgender procedures for minors outright. Legally, it applies only to Varian’s specific case. But the implications are enormous. However, the verdict sends a message to every clinic, therapist, and hospital enabling these surgeries: accountability is coming.

This verdict is a sign that the days of unchallenged, no-questions-asked child gender medicine may be numbered. When juries start holding these doctors liable, the dominoes will fall fast. The transgender industry built its house of cards on emotion and politics. Fox Varian’s verdict might be the gust of truth that finally brings it down.