Texas Children’s Hospital to Stop Puberty Blockers for Minors, Agrees to $10M Settlement With DOJ

The Justice Department said Friday that Texas Children’s Hospital has reached the first settlement in the department’s national investigation into medical treatment for transgender minors, agreeing to stop providing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to children, pay $10 million to resolve billing allegations, and fund a clinic for patients seeking detransition-related or restorative care.

The agreement, announced May 15, marks what the DOJ described as the first resolution in its broader probe of possible federal-law violations tied to such care for minors. It involves Texas Children’s Hospital, a major Houston-based pediatric system, giving the case significance beyond Texas as the federal investigation continues at hospitals around the country.

According to the DOJ, Texas Children’s entered agreements with both the Justice Department and the Texas Attorney General’s Office. The department said the hospital agreed not to provide puberty blockers or hormone therapy to minors and to pay $10 million to resolve allegations that it used false billings to public and private payors to obtain insurance coverage for pediatric gender-related treatment.

The DOJ said its allegations involved the False Claims Act, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and federal fraud and conspiracy laws. The department also said Texas Children’s agreed to establish what it called a “first-of-its-kind” clinic focused on restorative or detransition-related care and to spend millions more on care for children the government says were harmed by those treatments.

At the same time, the department emphasized that the case ended in a settlement, not a court ruling. “The claims resolved by the United States in the settlements are allegations only and there has been no determination of liability,” the DOJ said in its release.

Texas Children’s said it settled to avoid prolonged litigation and maintained that it acted lawfully. “We made the difficult decision to settle with the Texas Attorney General and the Department of Justice, closing a chapter that has been wrought with falsehoods and distractions … We stand proud knowing we will always put our purpose over politics and that we have and will continue to follow the law,” the hospital said in a statement quoted by the Houston Chronicle and Reuters.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office separately described the deal as requiring a $10 million payment to Texas over alleged improper Medicaid billing and the termination of privileges for five doctors. But multiple outlets, including Reuters, reported they were not immediately able to obtain the settlement text, so those specific terms could not be independently reviewed from the underlying agreement at the time of publication.

The settlement lands against a changing legal backdrop in Texas. Senate Bill 14, signed into law in 2023, bars puberty blockers, hormone therapy and certain transition-related procedures for minors in the state. The federal action also unfolds amid a medical debate in which major professional groups, including the Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, have supported multidisciplinary evaluation and, in some cases, puberty suppression and hormone treatment for adolescents with persistent gender dysphoria.

The DOJ’s announcement also stands out because its broader investigation has faced resistance in court. In 2025 and 2026, some courts limited or quashed Justice Department subpoenas seeking medical records for transgender youths. Even so, Friday’s agreement appears to be the first negotiated outcome in that national probe, making it an early enforcement benchmark in a closely watched fight over how hospitals, insurers and regulators handle this care.