Detransitioned woman files latest of several suits over sex-surgery performed when they were teens

A woman who surgically transitioned as a teenager into a transgender male is suing the doctors who performed a double mastectomy on her.

Luka Hein, a woman from Minnesota who is now 21, had a double mastectomy performed on her when she was 16 years old at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, DailyMail.com reported. She filed a lawsuit last Wednesday against the doctors, alleging malpractice and seeking financial damages.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center told Just the News on Monday that it "will not comment on pending litigation."

In July 2017, Hein says she was diagnosed with gender identity disorder after 55 minutes in her initial session at a clinic.

Hein is only one of the latest of several women who have "detransitioned" and filed lawsuits against their doctors for surgeries performed on them as minors. A Texas woman sued her former doctors for more than $1 million, claiming "they coerced her into gender modification treatment and a double mastectomy" according to The Texan.

Similarly, a North Carolina woman filed a suit alleging that her doctors committed "various types of fraud, medical malpractice, inflicting emotional distress, and utilizing unfair and deceptive trade practices over the course of her treatment for mental illness and throughout the gender reassignment process" according to the Catholic News Agency.

In June, Kayla Lovdahl and Chloe Cole, both from California, sued Kaiser Permanente for "gender affirming" procedures performed on them as minors, alleging "medical negligence" and ignorance of a large body of research on the risks of medicalized transitions.

According to Hein's lawsuit, the “snap” diagnosis by the clinic “fails to meet the standard of care for the proper evaluation of gender identity disorder,” and created a “feedback system that manipulates patients like Luka to deeper–and more damaging–levels of transgender medical intervention,” Dailymail.com reported. 

Hein had struggled with anxiety and depression following her parents’ divorce in 2015. Then, in 2017, she was persuaded to send sexually explicit pictures to an older man out of state, whom she met online. After Hein stopped sending pictures, he threatened her, and then she contacted law enforcement. She began transitioning following her encounter with the older man and as she felt uncomfortable about her body when she started puberty.

In October 2017, Hein was referred to the gender clinic for a double mastectomy. At the time, she had stopped wearing a chest binder a few months because of the rib pain it caused.

“I remember being like, ‘hey, this isn't that bad.’ I was still pushed into surgery anyway,” Hein told DailyMail.com.

She had the surgery in July 2018, which her lawsuit says she was “incapable of consenting to,” according to the lawsuit.

Hein’s lawyer, Harmeet Dhillon from the Center for American Liberty, told DailyMail.com, “This is really shocking malpractice.”

“Coercive methods were used to coerce the family into agreeing to it, such as a false representation about the mental health fallout from not doing it,” Dhillon added. “‘Your daughter will commit suicide if you don't agree to this,’ was communicated to her parents. 

“Doctors should not behave to vulnerable children or families in this manner, period. Doctors should not be mutilating and permanently disfiguring children, period, without some medical necessity, which did not present itself in this case.”

Hein took testosterone for four years. but when a hysterectomy was recommended by an OB-GYN physician, her parents objected and she didn't have the surgery, The New York Post reported.

She has detransitioned but alleges that the treatments have left her with erratic hormones, a deep voice, and permanent scars, according to Dailymail.com.

Also, Hein claims that hormone therapy has caused her to have pain in her hands, wrists, elbows, joints, lumbar spine, and pelvic area, noting that she’ll be unable to breastfeed and might be infertile.

States are enacting legislation to restrict or ban transgender medical procedures for minors. There are currently 22 states that have enacted such legislation, according to the Movement Advancement Project.

One of those states is Arkansas, which enacted House Bill 1570 in 2021. However, the law has been blocked in federal court after the American Civil Liberties Union brought a lawsuit against it, according to Talk Business & Politics.

In March, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed a bill into law that allows people who had transgender medical procedures to sue healthcare providers for medical malpractice, Talk Business & Politics reported.