A Texas doctor who disclosed that sex-change operations were being conducted for patients younger than 18 has been indicted by a federal grand jury after allegedly accessing and disseminating patient records without authorization. Dr. Eithan Haim forwarded documents from Texas Children’s Hospital to conservative writer and activist Christopher Rufo in 2023. 

The four-count indictment alleges Dr. Haim “obtained personal information including patient names, treatment codes and the attending physician from Texas Children’s Hospital’s (TCH) electronic system without authorization. He allegedly obtained this information under false pretenses and with intent to cause malicious harm to TCH,” federal prosecutors said in a statement Monday.

Both Dr. Haim and Mr. Rufo acknowledge that he did, in fact, leak the documents, though he says the law was not broken in doing so. The names and other details of the patients were heavily redacted by Dr. Haim before the information was disclosed, the two men say, so no one’s privacy was violated.

Dr. Haim’s attorney says the indictment is nothing more than the federal government trying to intimidate a physician who wanted to expose illegality. 

“Our client is a mandatory reporter of child abuse who reported as a whistleblower to the State of Texas what he had seen in his hospital,” Dr. Haim’s attorney, Marcella Burke, said in a statement to Houston Public Media. “It is our opinion that this is the government going out of its way to prosecute a whistleblower.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas says Dr. Haim criminally violated patient privacy protections that are guaranteed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Mr. Rufo says that the patient information disclosed by Dr. Haim contained no information that could be used to identify those patients involved in sex-change surgeries, which are now deemed illegal by the state of Texas. 

After Dr. Haim leaked the documents to Mr. Rufo, it was disclosed to the public that doctors were still performing the surgeries. “According to this presentation, TCH and Baylor College of Medicine encouraged doctors to begin treatment with puberty blockers and hormones during adolescence, and then consider surgeries, including breast removal and genital reconstruction, in adulthood — though the presenters explained that some surgical procedures could be appropriate for ‘adolescents on [a] case-by-case basis,’” Mr. Rufo wrote of the documents.

In February 2022, the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, said “certain medical and chemical procedures on children — several of which have the effect of sterilization — constitute child abuse.”

“While the spike in these procedures is a relatively recent development, sterilization of minors and other vulnerable populations without clear consent is not a new phenomenon and has an unsettling history,” Mr. Paxton wrote at the time. “Historically weaponized against minorities, sterilization procedures have harmed many vulnerable populations, such as African Americans, female minors, the disabled, and others.”

He launched an investigation into the children’s hospital after Dr. Haim disclosed the ongoing practice of sex-change operations on minors. TCH later halted the procedures. 

If convicted, Dr. Haim faces up to a decade in prison and as much as a $250,000 fine.