Lawyers for a plaintiff who sued her doctors after she detransitioned say they think her win in court last week is a harbinger of things to come.
At age 16, Fox Varian underwent a double mastectomy as she transitioned from a biological girl to identifying as a boy. The surgery occurred a year after she began meeting with a psychologist and started questioning her gender during sessions.
Nearly 3½ years after her surgery, she filed a medical malpractice lawsuit — the first of its kind — against her psychologist and the surgeon who performed the top surgery.
Now 22, Varian was awarded $2 million on Friday by a jury in response to her civil case.
“Shame and cognitive dissonance, Varian testified, kept her from openly confessing her remorse until three years following the mastectomy,” independent reporter Benjamin Ryan wrote in his court coverage. “At 19, she finally stopped identifying and presenting as male and has since considered herself a woman. But an incomplete one.”
The civil suit in Westchester County Supreme Court in White Plains, New York, is one of nearly 30 detransitioner lawsuits nationwide, according to Ryan. He added in a video posted by The Free Press, where his article was published, that Varian’s case and the ones that will follow could be “a reckoning over lax assessment standards by care providers when they consider whether irreversible medical interventions should be offered or given to minors with gender dysphoria.”
The jury’s decision was heavily influenced, Ryan said, by Varian and her mother, Claire Deacon’s testimonies. The mother and daughter said that Varian’s psychologist, Kenneth Einhorn, was an “enabler,” who assured Varian that the mastectomy would improve her mental health, and said that he “browbeat” Deacon into consenting to the irreversible surgery so Varian wouldn’t take her life.
Even Loren Schechter, who is chief of gender affirmation surgery at Rush University Medical Center, testified that Einhorn was ultimately in the wrong for encouraging Varian to have the mastectomy.
“I looked at this case really hoping — and even with an expectation that there would be enough" to sustain Einhorn’s referral to the surgeon to perform top surgery, Schechter said. “And I couldn’t do that.”
Deacon said that after Varian’s surgery, “She was still anxious, she was still depressed, she still had all the same issues.”
“It’s so hard to face that you are disfigured for life,” Varian told the jury. “No amount of reconstruction,” she said, “is ever going to bring back what I lost.”
However, attorneys for Einhorn argued that Varian and Deacon were attempting to shift the responsibility for their decisions onto others.
“Deacon was the one, after all, who signed the consent form. She was a licensed practical nurse and, notably, had a history of making nuanced judgment calls about her child’s care,” per Ryan’s coverage. “For example, Varian never received any vaccines due to Deacon’s concerns about vaccine injury.”
Ryan also noted that both health care providers claimed to have been outspoken to Varian that surgery “might not meet the teenager’s expectations or address her psychological struggles, and in particular, that she might regret it.”
What are the legal ramifications?
Charles LiMandri, a partner at LiMandri & Jonna, a California firm that is involved in multiple detransition lawsuits, including activist Chloe Cole in her upcoming case, told the Deseret News that these cases involving “medical malpractice plaintiffs all tend to have similar stories to tell about their abuse by the pediatric health care industry. Therefore, I would expect that these cases should continue to yield similar favorable results for the plaintiff victims of what is considered the worst medical scandal of modern times.”
He added that “the recent decision in the Varian case should be seen as a dire warning to all the so-called ‘gender affirming’ doctors, and their medical malpractice insurance carriers, that the financial risks and the risks to these activist doctors’ careers and reputations are looming large against them.”
Cole, who underwent a mastectomy at 16, has become a prominent figure in the debate over gender treatments for minors. She recently told the Deseret News that, like Varian, her top surgery was the catalyst for her detransition.
“That was the main reason, actually, why I ended up detransitioning,” Cole, now 21, said. “I realized that I wanted to become a mother one day, and this would very possibly bar me from that.”
Mark Trammell, CEO of Center for American Liberty, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization, who is also working on Cole’s lawsuit, told the Deseret News in a statement that they were “enormously encouraged” by the results in Varian v. Einhorn.
The verdict “confirms that accountability is possible and that doctors are not above the law,” Trammell said. “The Center for American Liberty represents multiple detransitioners, including Chloe Cole, who are bravely seeking justice for irreversible harm. There are countless young people victimized by the gender industrial complex, and this $2 million verdict—especially coming out of New York—gives real hope that their day in court is coming. CAL will continue to advocate tirelessly until justice is done."
Cole herself posted on X about Varian’s verdict:
“I couldn’t be more happy for Fox Varian. Detransitioners need justice,” she said. “My lawsuit with @Liberty_Ctr will further this precedent by exposing the major medical institution known as Kaiser Permanente.”