\n<\/p>\n
The Federal Trade Commission appears to be targeting transgender rights, going beyond its usual ways of operating to do so, according to experts and federal employees who spoke to WIRED.<\/p>\n
Since July 2025, the agency has been gearing up to frame gender-affirming care for minors as a consumer-protection issue, in a move that a former FTC employee, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, described as \u201cvery strange.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think their end goal here is to be on the front page, being warriors for the Trump anti-trans agenda,\u201d they claim.<\/p>\n
In January, the agency began requesting documents and materials from nonprofits that support health care providers who provide care to transgender people. The FTC issued what are known as civil investigative demands (CIDs)\u2014instruments similar to subpoenas that an agency can use to conduct investigations\u2014to the American Academy of Pediatrics, World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and the Endocrine Society. The cases are being brought by the agency\u2019s Bureau of Consumer Protection.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe FTC has brought lots of cases around phony cures, phony health products,\u201d the former employee says. But those cases were targeted around issues like businesses peddling fake Covid cures. In cases where the FTC has gone after nonprofits, the former employee says, it has involved the nonprofit misappropriating donations.<\/p>\n
These investigations will be spearheaded by Glenna Goldis, a former New York state assistant attorney general who claims she was fired by the Office of New York Attorney General Letitia James for \u201cspeaking out against pediatric gender medicine.\u201d In a podcast interview, Goldis said that she hoped to \u201cbankrupt\u201d doctors, including leading them to lose \u201cmedical licenses\u201d and \u201cteaching licenses.\u201d A recent update to the FTC\u2019s organization chart shows Goldis listed as assistant director for special projects (children and adolescents). \u201cThe Office of the Attorney General has protocols and rules for all employees, including for outside activities if an employee chooses to engage in them,\u201d a spokesperson for the New York Attorney General\u2019s office told WIRED in a statement. \u201cThis employee no longer works for the office due to her violation of those protocols and rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
Around the same time that Goldis was brought into the agency, the FTC began posting job applications for lawyers whose roles appeared to be dedicated to investigating gender-affirming care. These job postings from earlier this year reveal that the FTC is hiring lawyers at the highest levels of the federal pay scale whose work will focus on \u201cunfair and deceptive practices impacting children and families, including investigations relating to pediatric gender dysphoria treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The former FTC employee described the agency\u2019s move to target nonprofits as \u201creally weird\u201d and said it was \u201cvery unusual\u201d to hire lawyers for a specific project or case as opposed to recruiting people based on skill sets, like data protection.<\/p>\n
In response to questions from WIRED, FTC spokesperson Joseph Simonson said, \u201cVirtually everything you asked is based off a complete misunderstanding of the law, this agency, and the issue of whether children are potentially suffering from unnecessary mutilation. Stick to computers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fighting back against an FTC investigation is time-consuming and expensive. In a declaration supporting a motion to dismiss the CIDs in February, Mila Becker, the chief policy officer at the Endocrine Society, wrote that her organization estimates that \u201cour costs could be well over $500,000 plus weeks of IT and other relevant staff time.\u201d For nonprofits, she said, \u201cthis cost and staff burden is not easily absorbed and would have significant effect on our budget.\u201d Becker also notes that the organization possesses documents that \u201cmay involve third parties with their own privacy interests, or sensitive patient or health data\u201d that would need to be anonymized.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n