Detransitioner Soren Aldaco Must Pay $40,000 for Frivolous Lawsuit
The detransitioner, who has chosen to manager her dysphoria with mindfulness, had the lawsuit against her former HRT providers dismissed with prejudice.
by Evan Urquhart
The judge in a prominent detransitioner lawsuit in Texas has dismissed part of the case with prejudice and ordered the plaintiff, Soren Aldaco, to pay the attorney fees for some of her former providers, as first reported on Twitter by Assigned Media contributor Julie Rei Goldstein.
In an order dated April 11, 2024, Judge Donald Crosby granted a motion by Defendants Del Scott Perry and Texas Health Physicians Group, who had at one point provided Aldaco with hormone therapy, dismissing the lawsuit against them and imposing statuary sanctions amounting to $40,000 against Aldaco. This follows an earlier dismissal of the suit against Aldaco’s psychiatric providers. The final portion of the suit, concerning Aldaco’s chest surgery, remains active.
Orders to pay the opposing side’s attorney fees are typically used to discourage the filing of frivolous lawsuits as well as to limit the financial damage to people who are forced to defend against meritless lawsuits.
As with other similar suits, the argument of Aldaco’s lawsuit wasn’t that her providers had engaged in malpractice by diverging from ethical standards for gender-affirming treatment, but instead mounted a broad-based attack against gender-affirming care as a discipline. The argument that gender-affirming care is unethical in all forms was further complicated by Aldacos own public statements. Aldaco has written that her affirming treatments once eased her distress, and says she now manages her ongoing dysphoria through mindfulness.
While Aldaco’s lawsuit was covered widely when it was filed, particularly in right-wing media outlets, Assigned Media is the first news outlet to have covered this dismissal.
Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media and an incoming member of the 2024-2025 Knight Science Journalism fellowship class at MIT.