A teenage girl is suing a California hospital for removing her breasts when she was 13 years old after she claims she was influenced by people online to believe that she was transgender.
The plaintiff, Layla Jane, 18, says that she was prescribed puberty blockers and hormones by Kaiser Foundation Hospitals before being subjected to a double mastectomy on her healthy tissue.
Jane is being represented by Harmeet Dhillon and Charles LiMandri from LiMandri & Jonna LLP.
According to the lawsuit, Jane began being influenced by people online to believe that she was transgender when she was just 11 years old.
"This case is about a team of doctors (i.e., the Defendants) who decided to perform a damaging, imitation sex change experiment on Kayla, then a twelve-year-old vulnerable girl struggling with complex mental health co-morbidities, who needed care, attention, and psychotherapy, not cross-sex hormones and mutilating surgery," the lawsuit begins.
The complaint continues, "In early adolescence, around age 11, Kayla was exposed to online transgender influencers who prompted Kayla to entertain the erroneous belief that she was transgender. As a result, Kayla informed her parents that she was a boy. Prior to being exposed to online influences, Kayla never had expressed to anyone that she was transgender. Her parents didn’t know what to do and promptly sought guidance from various doctors and eventually the Defendants."
"Three Kaiser doctors, including Defendant Dr. Escalante, advised Kayla and her parents that Kayla was too young for cross-sex hormones," the complaint continues. "But Kayla and her parents eventually were referred to Defendants Dr. Watson, Dr. Taylor, and Dr. Tong, who immediately, and negligently, affirmed Kayla’s self- diagnosed transgenderism without adequate psychological evaluation. They instead promptly placed her on puberty blockers and testosterone at age 12, and performed a double mastectomy within six months at age 13. This all occurred after Dr. Watson determined in a single, 75-minute transition evaluation that Kayla was transgender."
Jane detransitioned when she was 17 years old.
The lawsuit points to three areas where the defendants failed the patient.
First, the lawsuit explains that desistence in childhood cross gender identities is well studied and demonstrates that around 80%-90% of gender dysphoria cases involving minors resolve by adulthood, with gender identity realigning to biological sex.
Next, the lawyers allege that the doctors failed to evaluate, appreciate, treat and consider her serious co-morbid mental health symptoms before placing her on hormones, puberty blockers, and removing her breasts.
Finally, the lawsuit states that "the medical studies in this area regarding minors, particularly minor girls, are dubious at best and do not indicate improved mental health outcomes from this affirmation treatment. One of the best studies in this area is a 30-year, population-based study of adults in Sweden, which found that transgender individuals who chemically/surgically 'transition' have poor mental health outcomes, increased psychiatric morbidity, suicidality, and a 19-fold increased rate of suicide as compared with the general population (40-fold for biological females)."
That study can be read here.
A second 2023 study cited by the lawsuit found a 49-fold increased rate of suicide as compared to the general population. During that study, two of the participants committed suicide, and suicidality was the most common side-effect of the “treatment.”
The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of the state of California.
“Kaiser continues to engage in the quackery of subjecting innocent children to irreversible sex mimicry treatment, including drugs and surgery, without informed consent,” Harmeet Dhillon, CEO of the Center for American Liberty, said in a statement to the Epoch Times.
“The medical providers responsible for Layla’s case, along with countless others, have substituted woke ideology for medically accepted standards of care, including lying to and manipulating vulnerable patients and families," Dhillon continued. “We are committed to holding them accountable for the harm inflicted upon Layla, and together we intend to strongly deter Kaiser’s factory-line approach that permanently mutilates an unknown number of American children, subjecting them to a lifetime of harm, regret, and medical consequences.”
The Center for American Liberty is also representing Chloe Cole, who has filed a similar lawsuit after having her breasts removed at 15 years old.
