America Just Did What New Zealand Won't: They're Suing WPATH For Deceiving The Public
Meanwhile in New Zealand, WPATH's local affiliate PATHA is using the courts to keep a lawful puberty blocker ban on ice. Something is deeply wrong with this picture.
“The US Federal Trade Commission, along with Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas, today filed a lawsuit against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), alleging the organization has provided the means for medical providers to make false and unsubstantiated claims to parents in order to sell pediatric medical transition services.” - Federal Trade Commission
When the United States government calls a medical guidelines body a consumer fraud risk, the rest of the world should pay attention.
On June 17, 2026, the Department of Health and Human Services commended the Federal Trade Commission for pursuing legal action against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) for alleged deceptive trade practices. This is not a fringe move. This is a federal consumer protection agency telling the public that a medical organisation producing clinical guidelines may have been misleading people.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put it plainly: “Medical organizations must follow the science, disclose conflicts, and put patients first. Children deserve the highest standard of care, parents deserve honest information, and the American people deserve accountability.”
His department had already laid the groundwork. In November 2025, HHS released a detailed report finding that WPATH’s Standards of Care version 8 - the guidelines used to justify puberty blocker prescriptions for children around the world - had suppressed systematic evidence reviews, was riddled with serious conflicts of interest, and relied on legal and political considerations rather than scientific ones.
The report identified something particularly damning: a pattern of “circular referencing and mutual endorsement” between WPATH and the Endocrine Society, two organisations that effectively validate each other while producing the guidelines clinicians then treat as settled science.
Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Brian Christine was blunt about what that means: “When medical organizations prioritize advocacy over scientific rigor, they deserve to be held accountable.”
That same organisation's New Zealand affiliate is currently using our courts to ensure children here can still be prescribed the very treatments the US government has just called into question.
Here in New Zealand, the same playbook is running - but with a legal twist
Health Minister Simeon Brown announced a ban on new puberty blocker prescriptions for gender dysphoria in minors on November 19, 2025, citing the lack of high-quality evidence and the findings of the UK’s Cass Review. The ban was to take effect December 19. Two days before that date, the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA), the NZ affiliate of WPATH - filed an urgent court injunction to stop it.
On December 17, 2025, the High Court granted interim relief. The Crown was directed not to enforce the ban pending a full judicial review. In February 2026, the Court of Appeal dismissed PATHA’s bid for stronger relief, but confirmed that prescribers could continue without disciplinary risk in the meantime. The substantive hearing is now scheduled for July 13 to 15 in Wellington.
Let that sink in. The regulations are on the books. Parliament passed them. A democratically elected minister enacted them citing the best available international evidence. And they are, right now, completely unenforced - frozen by litigation brought by an organisation whose international parent body has just been referred for consumer fraud investigation.
What is PATHA challenging?
PATHA is not even challenging the international evidence base. Their legal argument focuses on process - whether the minister followed the correct procedure. Yet the effect of the interim relief has been a de facto veto on Parliament’s decision. As lawyer Lady Deborah Chambers KC has noted, this raises serious constitutional questions about whether unelected courts should be the ones resolving evidence-contested health policy.
When activist organisations can use interim injunctions to neutralise legislation they dislike, parents are right to ask: who is actually governing this country?
The answer, right now, appears to be: not the people you voted for.
There is a positive signal worth watching
NZ First MP Jenny Marcroft has introduced the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill, which is now before the Social Services and Community Select Committee. Public submissions close July 2. The bill would define “woman” as “adult human biological female” and “man” as “adult human biological male” across all New Zealand legislation, anchoring biological sex in the Legislation Act 2019 itself.
If biological sex becomes the legal baseline for how courts, agencies and decision-makers interpret the law, it becomes significantly harder for organisations like PATHA to argue that sex-based distinctions in health policy are discriminatory. Policies that protect children’s bodies on the basis of biological sex - including a puberty blocker ban - would rest on firmer legal ground. Parent rights and child protection gain a clearer statutory foundation.
The July judicial review will not wait for the bill. But the bill sets a longer-term direction that the courts cannot ignore indefinitely.
What is happening in the United States is accountability
A government is looking at a medical lobby, examining who funded it, who it endorsed, and whether what it told the public was true - and then acting. In New Zealand, we are watching the same lobby’s affiliate use our courts to hold a lawful policy hostage. The parents whose children are caught in this limbo deserve to know: the international ground is shifting fast. The question is whether New Zealand’s institutions will move with it, or whether we will keep waiting for someone else to go first.
Meanwhile it’s ‘Pride’ month and it seems the dial has not shifted at all in public policy or government funding of the ‘gender identity’ industry. Read Let Kids Be Kids’ recent article where PATHA members were running an information evening for parents at Wellington High School.
Celebrating families, instead of ‘pride’ flags
A number of states in the US are declaring June ‘Nuclear Family Month’… at Let Kids Be Kids we’re changing the record as well, and injecting some classic New Zealand family vibes into the social media zeitgeist. We’re hoping it will catch on. Check out LKBK’s social media channels - follow, share and comment.
Penny Marie
Penny Marie is an independent researcher and investigative reporter, and the Founder of Let Kids Be Kids NZ.
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Pride month is full on here in Marlborough, hard to believe really, even the Mayor supports it!