Their Bodies Were Irreversibly Damaged. Now These Former Transgender Teens Are Fighting for Justice.

Young people who used to identify as transgender have filed dozens of lawsuits in the past few years, but have yet to win a verdict in their favor.

They are known as “detransitioners”—those who regret changing their gender identity, often after making irreversible changes to their bodies via medication and surgery on the advice of medical professionals.

This year, several cases that have survived dismissal and arbitration are making their way into courtrooms across the country.

​These cases face obstacles, including statutes of limitations, caps on medical malpractice awards, and huge legal bills for cases that can drag on for years.

​One case in New York, scheduled to go to trial this week, involves a then 16-year-old girl who thought she was a male and underwent a double mastectomy in December 2019, according to court documents. She has since detransitioned.

The case, Fox Varian vs. Kenneth Einhorn et. al, was filed in the Westchester County Supreme Court in 2023 against the teenager’s therapist, her doctor, and the medical facilities involved.

​The significance of the lawsuit is apparent to attorneys at Fiedler Deutsch, an experienced New York law firm representing the detransitioner in the medical malpractice suit.

​It “may be the first case of its kind in the nation to go to trial,” the firm’s website noted in an April 2025 post titled “Understanding Detransition Cases: Legal Recourse for Minors Impacted by Gender-Affirming Care.”

​Medical professionals involved in the case are accused of negligence and causing pain, suffering, and mental anguish “of a permanent nature” to the plaintiff, formerly known as Isabella Basile, according to court documents.

​Defendants allegedly failed to inform the teen of “the risks, hazards, and alternatives” involved in the medical procedures she underwent, according to the lawsuit.

​Defendants have denied any wrongdoing, saying in court documents that at the time of the surgery, “the plaintiff still identified as a male, was happy without breasts, and did not regret her decision.”

​Neither the defendant’s nor the plaintiff’s lawyers commented on the case when contacted by The Epoch Times.

​Nick Whitney, now a partner with Childers Law in Florida, knows firsthand what it takes to win a major medical malpractice case.

He was a trial attorney representing a family in a “medical kidnapping” case against Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The case was made famous by Netflix’s 2023 documentary “Take Care of Maya” and resulted in an initial $261 million verdict against the defendants—the largest in the state’s history.

​Whitney told The Epoch Times via email that a victory in the New York detransitioning case would shock the medical establishment.

​“The hospitals and doctors will act like ants running around in a sugar bowl if one of these brave plaintiffs prevails,” Whitney predicted.

​A win would potentially change the way that pediatric gender dysphoria is treated in the United States, he said.

​“The more immediate and substantial effect will be a forced reckoning—the doctors and hospitals will have to adjust their risk-calculus and decide if their legal exposure still justifies them victimizing children and adolescents,” Whitney said.

​Jonathan Hullihan, general counsel of Remnant Law Firm in The Woodlands, Texas, previously defended doctors over standard-of-care issues that arose over ivermectin prescriptions during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said a win in the New York case could be a game changer in states with more-generous statute of limitations deadlines.

​Despite the dramatic increase in transition procedures and surgeries on minors, detransition lawsuits face significant hurdles, he said.

​For example, the Themis Resource Fund lists 23 detransitioner cases, with most filed between 2022 and 2024. However, many have been dismissed or settled, or are still pending.

​Tort reforms, such as damage caps and statutes of limitations, are major roadblocks, Hullihan said. The cost of securing medical experts to evaluate deviations from the standard of care can exceed $50,000.

“These reforms in place often obstruct valid claims and insulate providers from accountability, particularly when regret from often irreversible surgery manifests years later,” Hullihan told The Epoch Times.

​Besides the New York case, two other detransitioner cases are expected to go to trial this year.

​Those include the high-profile California case brought by Chloe Cole against Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, doctors, therapists, and others.

​Cole is an outspoken detransitioner and critic of medically transitioning gender dysphoric children. She sued Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and others after surgeons removed both her breasts when she was 15.

​Her case, filed by the Dhillon Law Group, LiMandri & Jonna LLP, and the Center for American Liberty, is headed toward trial after California’s Third Appellate District ruled this fall that the case did not have to go to arbitration.

​The lawsuit claims defendants “engaged in fraudulent, oppressive, and malicious conduct by giving her incorrect/false information about suicide risk and by reinforcing her erroneous belief that gender transition services would resolve her mental health issues.”

​Doctors intervened medically, failing to address her mental health and autism-like symptoms beforehand, she told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.

Cole began identifying as a boy during adolescence and sought physical changes to match. She was prescribed puberty blockers and testosterone at age 13. Ultimately, surgeons performed a double mastectomy.

​Cole said she expects to get a trial date this year or next.

​“I also am really looking forward to being able to expose the things that Kaiser has done, not only to me, but to thousands of children in California and across the United States,” she said.

​“My biggest concern is making my case a precedent, showing other children, other families, that they can seek justice.”

​Kaiser has denied wrongdoing and sought dismissal of the lawsuit. The foundation did not respond to a request for comment.

Another upcoming trial is the Nebraska case of Luka Hein, which names the University of Nebraska Medical Center Physicians, the Nebraska Medical Center, doctors, therapists, and others as defendants.

​The Hein case, filed in 2023 by attorneys from the Thomas More Society, the Center for American Liberty, and Nebraska malpractice attorney Jeff Downing, is scheduled for trial in August. It must first survive summary judgment motions during a Feb. 4 hearing.

​Hein had both breasts surgically removed in 2018, when she was 16, as the first step in her “gender-affirming care” provided by doctors at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, according to the lawsuit.

​The lawsuit alleges that her doctors and the medical center were negligent and violated Nebraska’s Consumer Protection Act—accusations that the defendants deny.

​“I was going through the darkest and most chaotic time in my life, and instead of being given the help I needed, these doctors affirmed that chaos into reality,” Hein said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed. “I was talked into medical intervention that I could not fully understand the long-term impacts and consequences of.”

​Hein attended a “gender care clinic” operated by the medical center faculty. While there, staff did not question Hein’s self-diagnosis of transgender identification, according to the lawsuit.

​“By immediately affirming Luka, defendants developed a type of transgender tunnel vision that blocked out the other factors that were or may have been the cause or causes of Luka’s dysphoria,” the lawsuit alleges.

The medical center’s faculty use the “gender affirming” model, according to the lawsuit. They “affirm” the patient’s chosen gender and then approve medical procedures based on the Dutch Protocol, which calls for puberty blockers, and gender-related hormones and surgery, according to the lawsuit.

​That protocol model was based on weak evidence that transgender patients benefited from medical interventions, according to the complaint.

This spring, the Department of Health and Human Services released a 409-page review of medical procedures used for gender dysphoric children. The report advocates for psychotherapy as a “noninvasive alternative to endocrine and surgical interventions,” because the benefits of hormones or surgery have not been established.

Likewise, European countries have moved away from medical intervention following the 2024 release in the UK of the Cass report, which resulted in a shift away from the “gender affirmation” model for children.

Doctors have a responsibility to rule out other potential causes of a patient’s distress before turning to irreversible procedures such as a double mastectomy or hysterectomy, the Hein lawsuit contends.

​In marketing their services, according to the lawsuit, the defendants used descriptions such as “masculinizing hormone therapy” to describe medical interventions for gender dysphoria.

​These innocuous-sounding procedure descriptions marketed by the defendants are deceptive because they are not therapy, according to the lawsuit.

​“In fact, they are the opposite. Rather than healing, these procedures inflict harm that causes malfunctioning and malformation of the teenage body and brain,” it alleges.

​An attorney for the defendants did not respond to a request for comment.