Listen to this articleA pediatrician who travels the country testifying in courts and conferences against the transgender community was appointed by outgoing Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson to be part of the commission that will determine a transgender girl’s eligibility to play in school sports.
Dr. Paul Hruz, based in St. Louis, Mo., will now serve on Utah’s School Activity Eligibility Commission which will examine the bodies of transgender girls to determine if they are able to compete in school sports. He will serve the place of “a board-certified physician with expertise in gender identity healthcare,” even though he has never practiced gender identity healthcare.
North Carolina United States District Judge Loretta C. Biggs ruled to exclude the testimony of Hruz in a case involving insurance coverage of transgender healthcare for North Carolina state employees.
“Plaintiffs have offered evidence that calls Hruz’s motivations — and thereby, his reliability — into serious question,” Biggs wrote in her decision. “Hruz admits a connection to the Alliance Defending Freedom (“ADF”), a political organization with both “moral objections” and scientific objections to [transgender healthcare] treatments at issue.”
“Early in his research of gender dysphoria, Hruz told a fellow doctor that he had ‘a significant problem with the entire issue’ and ‘whole idea of transgender,” the ruling continued, adding that one “parent testifies that the conversation had a ‘religious tone’ and was not ‘based on science.'”
“Hruz is not a psychiatrist, psychologist, or mental healthcare professional. He has never diagnosed a patient with gender dysphoria, treated gender dysphoria, treated a transgender patient, conducted any original research about gender dysphoria diagnosis or its causes, or published any scientific, peer-reviewed literature on gender dysphoria,” Biggs ruled.
The Salt Lake Tribune, which broke this story, attempted to reach Hruz, Wilson, and others on the commission, but no one answered their requests.
GLAAD has an extensive page outlining Hruz’s efforts against the transgender community:
From GLAAD:
— In his ruling that Arkansas’s 2021 law banning gender-affirming medical care for minors is unconstitutional, U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. cited significant problems with the state’s selected experts: “The Court does not credit the testimony of Professor [Mark] Regnerus and gives it no weight because the Court finds that he lacks the qualifications to offer his opinions and failed to support them.”; “Dr. [Patrick] Lappert does not meet the requirements under Daubert to give opinions relevant to this case.”; “Dr. [Paul] Hruz has never treated a patient for gender dysphoria.”
— Published a deeply flawed study that attempted to demonstrate that children of same-sex parents fared worse in comparison to children raised by straight couples—without actually studying the children of same-sex parents. Both progressives and conservatives called the study bogus. A Netherlands data analysis published in 2021 reported that “children in same-sex-parented families outperform children in different-sex-parented families on multiple indicators of academic performance, including standardized test scores, high school graduation rates, and college enrollment.”
— Testified in support of a 2022 Arkansas law that bans doctors from providing gender-confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers, or surgery to anyone under age 18. In court, Hruz acknowledged that he has never treated a patient for gender dysphoria or diagnosed a patient with it. The Arkansas ban is opposed by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, and the Pediatric Endocrine Society.
— Plaintiffs in Adams v. School Board of St. John’s County alleged that a parent of a transgender teen said after she raised concerns about suicide risk, Hruz said, “Some children are born in this world to suffer and die.” They also claimed that in a 2017 presentation, “Dr. Hruz referred to being transgender as something that ‘probably goes back to some of the early heresies in the church.’”
— Signed onto an amicus brief that said, “conditioning children into believing that a lifetime of impersonating someone of the opposite sex, achievable only through chemical and surgical interventions, is a form of child abuse.” He has also signed briefs that used language like “delusion” and “psychological disorder.”
— In 2022, North Carolina District Judge Loretta Biggs granted in part a motion to exclude Hruz testimony, writing, “First, Hruz is not qualified to offer expert opinions on the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, the DSM, gender dysphoria’s potential causes, the likelihood that a patient will ‘desist,’ or the efficacy of mental health treatments.” Additionally: “He has never diagnosed a patient with gender dysphoria, treated gender dysphoria, treated a transgender patient, conducted any original research about gender dysphoria diagnosis or its causes, or published any scientific, peer-reviewed literature on gender dysphoria.”
