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The charges against Dr. Ethan Haim were dropped after a personal appeal from Missouri Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley to President Donald Trump.
Federal prosecutors on Friday dropped charges against a Texas doctor who was the source for a story on gender-affirming care for minors at a hospital in Houston. A judge then dismissed the case with prejudice, ensuring Dr. Eithan Haim could not be charged with the same offenses in the future.
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“We took on the most powerful federal leviathan in human history and won,” Haim told Fox News following the dismissal.
The original indictment from the Department of Justice in June of 2024 alleged that “Haim obtained personal information including patient names, treatment codes, and the attending physician from Texas Children’s Hospital’s (TCH) electronic system without authorization.”
Prosecutors further allege he obtained the information under false pretenses and intended to cause TCH malicious harm.
Haim, 34, reportedly reactivated his access to the hospital’s electronic records system in April 2023. He was accused of illicitly obtaining patient names, treatment codes, and attending physician details, which he then shared with conservative activist Christopher Rufo. Rufo, known for his hardline stance againsttransgender rights, used the information to publish an exposé claiming the hospital continued to provide gender-affirming care for minors despite a public announcement to halt such services.
Related: Texas doctor charged for leaking health records of transgender kids to far-right extremist
The doctor does deny that his actions were illegal and instead said he was a whistleblower upset that the hospital was allegedly providing gender-affirming care to minors after publicly announcing it had stopped such treatments.
While gender-affirming care for minors was legal at the time the article was written, Texas Children’s Hospital publicly declared it would cease the practice.
All major U.S. medical associations have endorsed gender-affirming care treatment for minors with gender dysphoria.
Partly in response to the Ruffo exposé, the following month in June Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation, Senate Bill 14, banning nearly all gender-affirming care for minors in the state.
In July, Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union and its Texas affiliate, the Transgender Law Center, and pro bono lawyers from the firms of Scott Douglass & McConnico LLP and Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, filed a lawsuit in a Texas court challenging the new law. In July 2024, the Texas Supreme Court lifted a stay on the new law. The vote was 8-1 in favor of the new law.
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“We conclude the Legislature made a permissible, rational policy choice to limit the types of available medical procedures for children, particularly in light of the relative nascency of both gender dysphoria and its various modes of treatment and the Legislature’s express constitutional authority to regulate the practice of medicine,” Justice Rebeca Aizpuru Huddle wrote in the decision.
“It is impossible to overstate the devastating impact of this ruling on Texas transgender youth and the families that love and support them,” Karen Loewy, senior counsel and director of constitutional law practice at Lambda Legal, said in a press release following the decision. “Instead of leaving medical decisions concerning minor children where they belong, with their parents and their doctors, the Court here has elected to let politicians — in blatant disregard for the overwhelming medical consensus — determine the allowed course of treatment, threatening the health and the very lives of Texas transgender youth."
The decision to drop charges came after a personal appeal from Missouri Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley to President Donald Trump, who falsely said the hospital illegally performed surgeries on trans minors.
Haim said he would spend the next 20 years paying off the $2 million in legal expenses he incurred defending himself in the case. A GoFundMe page raised a reported $1.2 million to date for Haim.
The case was scheduled to go to trial in February. If convicted on all charges, Haim faced up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
