EPIC Calls on FTC to Abandon Gender-Affirming Care Inquisition, Refocus on Safeguarding Consumers

On Friday, EPIC submitted comments in response to the FTC’s request for information on gender-affirming care for minors. EPIC called on the FTC to close this wasteful and misguided inquiry.  

As EPIC’s comments explain, the request for information presumes, against the weight of the scientific evidence, that providing gender affirming care to minors (commonly non-medical in nature) could constitute an unfair or deceptive trade practice. However, the standards of care and best practices from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) agree that providing gender affirming care is safe, improves mental health, reduces deaths by suicide, and is fully reversible with few side effects. 

EPIC noted that the FTC’s inquiry is a departure from its prior consumer protection actions against harmful healthcare and health-related business practices. The RFI suggests that the Commission intends to second-guess the clinical judgement of doctors, which is both beyond the FTC’s expertise as an agency and a poor foundation for the Commission to assert an unfair or deceptive practice.  

“With the resources it is devoting to this RFI, the Commission could instead carry forward the FTC’s prior work to rein in the data brokers and aggregators that traffic in our most sensitive personal information,” EPIC told the FTC. “It could use its Section 5 authority to disrupt surveillance pricing, targeted advertising, and other harmful pillars of the commercial surveillance ecosystem that consumers revile. It could sharpen its focus on data security enforcement to combat the rising tide of breaches. It could take any number of other enforcement and regulatory actions to safeguard consumers and their personal information. Instead, the Commission has signaled its intention to intrude on personal medical decisions that are the rightful province of parents, minors, and qualified medical professionals. This marks a sad day, indeed, for ‘the chief federal agency on privacy policy and enforcement[.]’” 

For decades, EPIC has worked with the Commission under different administrations to safeguard consumers’ personal data. EPIC also fights to protect the privacy rights of individuals and marginalized communities, including the LGBTQ+ community. EPIC has submitted FOIA requests, provided comment on regulations, and filed complaints regarding unlawful practices harmful to LGBTQ+ persons.