Attorney General Pam Bondi warned doctors who perform gender-affirming procedures on children and teenagers would be subject to Justice Department investigations.
In a memo signed earlier this week, Bondi directed U.S. attorneys to use existing laws on female genital mutilation to investigate providers of transgender health care for minors.
“The Department of Justice will not sit idly by while doctors, motivated by ideology, profits, or both, exploit and mutilate our children,” Bondi wrote Tuesday. “Under my watch, the Department will act decisively to protect our children and hold accountable those who mutilate them under the guise of care.”
The nation’s top prosecutor said that any person or institution that provides gender-affirming surgery for young Americans would face the full force of the law. Bondi did not explicitly state what type of procedure would be considered female genital mutilation, per her interpretation of the law.
“I am putting medical practitioners, hospitals, and clinics on notice: In the United States, it is a felony to perform, attempt to perform, or conspire to perform female genital mutilation (‘FGM’) on any person under the age of 18,” she continued. “That crime carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years per count.”
Bondi directed DOJ officials to investigate pharmaceutical companies that allegedly make “false claims about the on-or-off-label use of puberty blockers, sex hormones,” or other drugs used to facilitate a minor’s gender transition.
She also urged officials to hold drug manufacturers accountable for allegedly misleading the public about the “long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilations” for young people, which may include hormone replacement treatment.
The attorney general blamed “gender ideology” for children undergoing the procedures, claiming that young people are being taught to process stress and confusion as a case of mistaken identity.
Bondi’s memo cites research conducted by Stop the Harm Database, an advocacy group that opposes gender-affirming care for minors.
About 14,000 children received treatment for gender dysphoria—the distress one feels due to the mismatch between their gender they were assigned at birth and their gender identity—and 5,700 had surgery between 2019 and 2023, per the group’s findings.
However, some trans advocates have pointed to a misinterpretation of the data.
In 2011, for example, more than 14,000 breast reduction procedures were performed in the U.S. on adolescent boys to correct gynecomastia, a benign condition that causes enlarged breast tissue, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
The directive follows President Donald Trump’s executive order in January that aims to restrict access to gender-affirming care for Americans under the age of 19.
The order, which has temporarily been blocked, threatened that the government would prohibit federal funding and grants from medical institutions that perform such practices.
Earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services urged states not to use Medicaid funds for gender reassignment surgeries and hormone treatments for minors.
“As a doctor and now CMS Administrator, my top priority is protecting children and upholding the law,” Mehmet Oz, the agency’s administrator, said in a statement.
