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Federal prosecutors on Friday dismissed criminal charges against a physician in Texas accused of obtaining illegal and sharing health documents from the children’s hospital in Texas.
Dr. Ethan Haim, 34, had faced an indictment with four charges after prosecutors alleged that he discovered documents for a conservative activist for juvenile hospital transition services, according to court documents. He was charged with incorrect detection of individually identifiable health information.
In February 2022, Governor Greg Abbott led the Department of Family and Texas Protective Services to investigate parents who sought care of gender affirmation for their children shortly after Texas Attorney General Ken Petxon issued his opinion on practice. An opinion of the Prosecutor General is an interpretation of the existing law and cannot create “new provisions in law or accurate unintentional, undesirable effects of the law”, according to the Texas website AG.
About a month later, the Texas Children’s Hospital announced that the hospital would stop its service affirmation for juveniles.
Haim, a Dallas -based surgeon, worked as a physician at the Texas Children’s Hospital during his stay at Baylor College of Medicine Resident from 2018 to 2023. 2023. A month later, that joint documents with Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist.
An indictment revealed last year that Haim received personal information including patient names, treatment codes and the name of the doctor participating through the electronic system without authorization.
The order that rejects these charges was presented by acting on US lawyer Jennifer Lowery and signed by Judge David Hittner at the US District Court for the Southern County of Texas on Friday. Federal prosecutors did not provide an explanation for dismissal.
Haim’s allegations came to light in an article published by activist Christopher Rufo in 2023 claiming that the doctors of the Texas Children’s Hospital continued to provide care for gender affirmation for minors a year after they pledged to stop those services. within Another article last yearHaim confirmed that he provided information to patients who took care of Rufo.
Rufo mentioned whistle documents in his allegations that doctors were encouraged to continue gender treatment for juveniles with the use of puberty and hormone blockers. The documents provided by Haim do not contain any information that “identified any individual,” Rufo said.
In a previous statement, the children’s hospital in Texas said the hospital has provided only services in accordance with state law.
“Our client is a mandatory child abuse reporter, who reported as a whistle to the Texas state what he had seen in his hospital,” Marcella Burke, the lawyer of Haim, told Houston Public Media. “Opinion our opinion that this is the government that is leaving its way to follow a whistle.”
