Dr. Paul Hruz

—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 tests 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.”