The Federal Trade Commission followed through on its nearly year-old pledge to crack down on allegedly false and misleading statements about so-called gender affirming care, suing the World Professional Association for Transgender Health in a Texas federal court known for friendliness to Republican attorneys general.

Texas, Iowa, Alaska and Nebraska joined the FTC in Wednesday's lawsuit, alleging state-specific harms caused by WPATH, which was notably not cited by Democrats or their witnesses in a recent Senate hearing on pediatric gender medicine.

WPATH developed its Standards of Care 8 "without regard for scientific protocols," "knows that its recommendations are not supported by scientific evidence or a medical consensus" and yet "misrepresents the risks and benefits of pediatric medical transition" by falsely claiming gender transitions for kids are "lifesaving," the suit says. 

The Biden administration was caught after the fact successfully pressuring WPATH to remove age minimums in SOC-8, as the suit documents.

The group has an economic interest in pediatric gender transitions, as it advocates expanding insurance coverage to pay for them, "promotes the purchase of its members’ pediatric medical transition services" and financially benefits "by leveraging its position as the de facto authority on transition medicine in the United States," the suit says.

"WPATH has provided to clinicians the means by which they deceive children and their parents into purchasing pediatric medical transition services," it says.

The group also hid side effects from gender-affirming treatments, including "mood disturbances," vaginal and erectile pain and "inability to orgasm" from cross-sex hormones, according to the FTC.

"For decades, the FTC has taken action against entities that make deceptive and unsubstantiated health-related claims," Chairman Andrew Ferguson said. "The complaint filed today reflects that same long-standing mandate: when an entity makes a claim about a medical treatment, the claim must be truthful, evidence-based and not misleading."

WPATH blasted the commission for "interfering with the process of individualized medical decision-making" and alleged it has no "jurisdiction over WPATH and its noncommercial speech. The state claims have similar factual and legal flaws."

Just as a federal judge earlier this year struck down the "FTC’s improper requests to WPATH for protected information," WPATH expects the same result when the courts hear this "similarly baseless actual complaint" with the Trump administration's "go-to, obedient" state attorneys general, WPATH said.