DALLAS — A court in Dallas County has issued a temporary restraining order that allows physicians at Children’s Medical Center to resume providing gender-affirming care for transgender youth. 

The ruling comes as part of a legal case the clinic’s founder, Dr. Ximena Lopez, filed against Children’s Health of Dallas. 

“My client never wanted to sue anyone,” says Dr. Lopez’s attorney, Charla Aldous of Aldous\Walker in Dallas. “But UT Southwestern and others put up roadblocks to keep us from finding out the truth about who closed down GENECIS. That’s fine. We’ll do this another way and in the process, we’ll take care of kids who need this treatment.” 

According to Children’s and UT Southwestern’s own marketing, the GENECIS clinic was the first and largest program in the southwest, providing care to transgender youth. The clinic provided both counseling and medication, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, to young people experiencing seeking treatment.

Lopez, who has been seeing such patients for over a decade, says the treatment GENECIS provided can be lifesaving. Without it, transgender youth are prone to depression and suicide at rates much higher than the norm. 

UT Southwestern and Children’s shut down the GENECIS clinic in the fall of 2021. Lopez and others at the clinic were told they could only treat existing patients and that they could not provide any gender-affirming care to new ones.

“The hospital and UT Southwestern were very proud of this program and they should be,” Dr. Lopez says. “But all of that changed when this became a political issue rather than a medical one. I’ve seen patients across all sectors of society from families conservative, liberal and everything in between. They need this care.”