By Nate Raymond
Feb 17 (Reuters) – The American Academy of Pediatrics filed a lawsuit on Tuesday accusing the U.S. Federal Trade Commission of launching an investigation concerning its support of gender-affirming care for transgender youth as part of an effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to retaliate against the medical group.
The pediatricians association in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., challenged a demand the FTC made last month that AAP turn over an array of information as part of what the group called an unconstitutional effort to punish it for its support for treating transgender youth.
It said the FTC’s document demand is overbroad and was issued to intimidate it in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protections against government abridgment of freedom of speech after earlier disagreements with the Trump administration.
“Unable to prevail in the marketplace of ideas, the FTC has resorted to burdening AAP with an intrusive and expensive investigation that is unconstitutional and outside the scope of the FTC’s statutory authority,” AAP alleged in the lawsuit, which seeks a judicial order blocking the document request as unconstitutional.
The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FTC is a federal agency that enforces various antitrust and consumer protection laws. It issued a civil investigative demand, akin to a subpoena, on January 15 as part of a probe into whether AAP made false claims or engaged in unfair practices in connection with the marketing and advertising of “pediatric gender dysphoria treatment,” according to court papers.
Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and sex at birth.
The FTC’s demand came nearly a year after Trump in January 2025 signed executive orders that declared the United States would recognize only two sexes, male and female, and directed agencies to end all federal funding or support for gender-affirming care for minors.
In Tuesday’s lawsuit, AAP said the FTC was targeting it to punish it for a 2018 policy statement the group issued related to gender-affirming care, stating its backing for appropriate medical interventions to support transgender youth.
Three days before the FTC’s document demand, a federal judge blocked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from terminating nearly $12 million in grant funding awarded to the AAP that was canceled after it clashed with U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his changes to vaccine policy.
The group is pursuing a separate lawsuit challenging efforts by federal health regulators under Kennedy to reshape vaccine policy in ways it says will lower immunization rates, harming public health.
AAP, founded in 1930 and based in the Chicago area, is an organization of 67,000 pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)
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