Doc Who Stole Trans Kids' Medical Records Gets Charges Dropped, Because What Law?
What justice can exist under Trump?
Two years ago, Texas surgeon Eithan Haim stole patient data to which he was not entitled, shared those records with the thoroughly despicable Christopher Rufo, and then turned his obvious violations of the law into a right-wing cause célèbre. It’s been a long, strange, and terrifying trip seeing patient records released to be repeatedly distorted in the media and used by Texas state Attorney General Ken Paxton to open investigations. Given the state where it occurred, most trans people assumed there would be no justice. Then, last summer, the feds indicted Haim under rarely used criminal-enforcement provisions of HIPAA. But Trump was elected in November, and this past Friday that hope for justice vanished, mocking those of us who believed we could see something substantial at the bottom of our case of curses.
The winding path of the case reminds me of the recent road trip documentary Will & Harper. In it Will Farrell and his friend Harper Steele drive from New York to California, exploring how their relationships with each other and with the United States have and haven’t changed since Steele came out as trans. At several points Steele reminisces about travelling the country on her own, sometimes with her car, sometimes without, just freely wandering about the United States. It was an old and familiar habit, a comfortable meandering through geological nooks and social crannies that took on a new, disquieting air after her transition. In one vulnerable moment she pointedly, almost perfectly expresses what every USA-loving trans person must at some point:
“I’ve been across this country almost as much as a truck driver. I’ve driven it; I’ve hitchhiked; I’ve been everywhere. I love it so much. I just don’t know if it loves me back right now.”
The past week has been a constant series of reminders that the USA just doesn’t love trans people, not visitors, migrants, residents, or citizens. Article after article details Trump’s executive order on sex and gender. Search for “transgender news” and it’s all you see on page after page of results. The order is notable, of course, but not that notable. There are other reminders that articulate with more art than the drafters of Trump’s executive orders the contempt in which trans people are held. The one poking yr Wonkette sharply in the belly like a swallowed cedar-cheese toothpick is the dismissal of all charges against Eithan Haim.
With so many people whose crimes have been pardoned, sentences commuted, or charges dropped, Haim, too, gets lost in the last week’s news. But the coverage is there, in the New York Times, no less, and other places, too. Rarely, however, does the coverage have anything noteworthy to say. With the US Department of Justice effectively on the same side as the data-thief, readers have less available even than the lazy both-sides journalism we’ve come to expect. Reuters wraps up its article this way:
Haim has described himself as a whistleblower who was seeking to expose the hospital's transgender care program.
After Trump took office, Haim in a social media post on X on Wednesday argued that with Biden out of office, the case against him should be dropped, calling it a “textbook weaponization against the Biden regime's political enemies.”
There is no indication that they even tried to contact anyone who might have pushed back against Haim’s claims of saintly motives and political victimization. Chron’s coverage was much, much worse.
But of course, prosecuting criminal action is not persecution, and Haim did do wrong. No service that Texas Children’s Hospital provided was against the law or even against medical best practices as established by major medical associations and experts in the field. But with the January 19th resignation of Alamdar S. Hamdani as the US Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, there is no prosecutor to stand up for justice for the trans teens and their families whose privacy was violated to serve Haim’s political ends. And with journalists treating the anti-trans decisions of Trump’s Department of Justice as if it were confirmation that anti-trans activists can do and have done no wrong, it’s hard to imagine what justice there might be for the next four years — for trans people, for their families, and for all the others Trump loves to hate.
It’s only on trans-owned and trans-run websites that you’ll find any hint of the current harm and future danger. Transvitae wrote:
Many worry that privacy breaches could become more frequent if government rhetoric continues to suggest that transgender care is morally or legally questionable.
Then continued:
“This dismissal is not a relief but a warning,” says Shannon O’Rourke, a Houston-based advocate who works with transgender youth and their families. “If individuals feel emboldened to hack into or misuse private records in the name of ‘exposing transgender care,’ then we’re living in a climate that threatens everyone’s medical privacy.”
Of course this is true. For years we’ve seen violations of patients’ privacy and dignity after abortions or miscarriages. We’ve seen it as well with detained migrants. Haim’s behaviour extends that to trans health care, and the dismissal of HIPAA enforcement charges legitimizes the tactic, which in Haim’s case involved months of efforts to regain access to computer records at his former workplace and then multiple downloads of private data to which he knew he was not entitled.
What privacy will our state and federal governments now defend? And who now is left who will tell the stories of the people violated?
We know police and prosecutors will not speak up, because police and prosecutors are not abortionists.
We know that inspectors general will not speak up, because IGs are not migrant teens forced to give birth.
We know that Reuters will not speak up, because Reuters is not a trans patient seeking care.
We know that the Democrats in leadership will not speak up, because Democratic leadership is not unreasonably partisan.
And now even your friendly, neighborhood Crip Dyke finds it hard to speak up — not from a failure of outrage, but from the diversity of targets. Against whom should one rage? There is no Joseph McCarthy that if skewered would deflate this moment swollen with fascist intent. We are everywhere failing each other, and if one were now to ask, “Have you no decency?” the question would have to be put to us all.
We have dispensed with justice, with rule of law, with economic fairness, with comity and even with our supposed norms. We can only look upon this case, this case of a man who violated children now lionized by his lawyer in the international press with nary a voice to detail even the known and agreed facts of the crimes for which he was charged, and ask ourselves, after everything we have given up, “At long last, have we not even decency?”
Your friendly, neighborhood Crip Dyke also writes Pervert Justice!
Crip Dyke is by far the heppest cat on BlueSky. She probably has too many followers to net you hipster cred if you join them now.
Three years ago, I finally realized that for 60 years I had been trying to fit a female body into a male psyche. I was born to be a gay man, but my gender was female. I was just trying to assimilate all this when the Magats started the really vile transgender hate. At my age I figured gender reassignment was a bit silly and am I glad I didn't start. But for all my younger selves, Dear God how I cry. This isn't right, it's morally repulsive, and I hope we can somehow prevail and reset values. As Tim Walz said Mind your own damn business.
It's time for lawsuits from Hell to crawl in this guy's ear.
Can we get in contact with the American Medical Association and see about revoking this guy's license?