Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday added healthcare fraud claims to his lawsuits against two Dallas doctors accused of providing minors with allegedly illegal gender-transition care.
Paxton's lawsuit accuses the doctors of having intentionally falsified billing and medical records to conceal that they'd provided the care, reports The Dallas Morning News.
The additional claims were made against Drs. May Lau and M. Brett Cooper. Their attorneys did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
As part of the new charges, filed under the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act, Paxton's office said in a statement that it will seek enhanced penalties.
Those would be "three times the amount of improperly paid Medicaid funds and substantial civil penalties for each unlawful act to hold the physicians accountable to Texas law and ensure that Texas is repaid for the evil performed by the doctors," the statement read.
Paxton initially sued the two doctors in 2024 and also filed a similar lawsuit against a doctor in El Paso.
However, that lawsuit was dropped earlier this year, with Paxton's office saying that no legal violations had been found.
After the initial lawsuit, Lau surrendered her Texas medical license, moving her practice to Oregon.
The Cooper and Lau lawsuits focus on the medical care the doctors provided while they were affiliated with UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children's Medical Center Dallas.
They are accused of violations of the Texas law implemented in September 2023.
Physicians at the time were allowed to wean their patients who were already in treatment.
Paxton's office claims that the doctors provided puberty blockers and hormone therapy to minors, calling the physicians activists who were intentionally or forcibly harming children.
LGBTQ and civil rights organizations, however, say the ban on gender-transition care hurts young transgender children.
Medical organizations also criticize the bans, saying they allow state authorities to interfere with relationships between doctors and patients while preventing families from making their own decisions about their children.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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