Andrew Bailey Sues Southampton Youth Clinic, Claims Substandard Care

The Missouri Attorney General is countersuing a youth gender clinic which has challenged the ban on gender-affirming care in court, alleging they did not provide comprehensive psychological assessments.

by Evan Urquhart

The viciously anti-trans attorney general of Missouri has made a fresh attack on one of the only providers in Missouri that has continued to offer gender-affirming care to youth under a harshly restrictive new law. On Sunday September 25 AG Andrew Bailey released a statement announcing a recently filed counter lawsuit against Southampton Community Healthcare. The Southampton gender clinic is among the plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU, who have sued to overturn the statewide ban on treating gender dysphoria in young patients. In August a judge allowed Missouri’s ban to go into effect as the case plays out.

The core claim of Bailey’s counter suit is that Southampton did not provide comprehensive psychological assessments to young patients who sought treatment for gender dysphoria. It requests that the clinic pay a fine of $1000 for each patient who was insufficiently assessed and restitution to patients who underwent a gender transition without a full assessment.

The Associated Press story on the counter suit also claims, “The lawsuit said Southampton’s doctors admitted in court during the hearing over the new law that they failed to provide comprehensive mental health evaluations to all their patients.” However, a close reading of the counter suit portion of Bailey’s filing (counter claim begins on page 35) does not seem to include such a claim. The filing claims that witnesses for the other side have stated that comprehensive psychiatric assessments are necessary, and that Southampton did not provide them, but there is no clear basis for the latter claim. Instead, the suit provides a Washington Post article which mentions a presentation to WPATH by Trans Youth CAN!. Trans Youth CAN!’s presentation involved a description of 10 gender clinics in Canada, five of which did not always require comprehensive psychological assessments before providing puberty blockers or hormone therapy.

screenshot from the legal filing, page 43

This Washington Post article, and the embedded presentation about clinics in Canada, seems to be the only evidence included in the suit that Southampton did not provide comprehensive psychological assessments. The counter claim goes on to say, “Since 2018, Counterclaim-Defendants have failed to adopt and consistently apply a policy of ensuring that each minor patient in Missouri receives a comprehensive mental health assessment before receiving gender transition interventions.” However, it is not immediately clear from the filing what evidence the AG has that the clinic did not do so.

The filing also contains multiple false and misleading statements about the evidence around youth gender transition, including the outright false claim that patients who receive puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones are infertile on page 26, and the wildly misleading claim that the rate of detransition “may be around 30 percent.”

News reports that claim the counter suit is based on representatives of Southampton Community Healthcare admitting they didn’t require comprehensive psychological assessments in court should be treated skeptically, as the filing itself does not seem to contain that claim.