New NC law will be tested by Gaston County lawsuit over gender-affirming care
A Charlotte-area lawsuit will test new statewide legislation on LGBTQ rights and could lay the groundwork for more limited access to gender-affirming care for transgender people.
Prisha Mosley — who received gender-affirming care as a teen but later “detransitioned” — petitioned in Gaston County court Friday to reinstate medical malpractice and negligence claims she first filed in 2023 against multiple health care providers.
A judge originally dismissed the claims because they exceeded the statute of limitations, but House Bill 805 extended that window to sue from four to 10 years. The bill also changes the definition of gender assigned at birth in state law to exclude gender identity, among other provisions dubbed anti-LGBTQ by opponents. It became law after legislators overrode Gov. Josh Stein’s veto in July.
A judge is expected to rule by the end of August on whether Mosley’s case can proceed. Advocates on both sides say the case may have widespread legal consequences.
Beth Parlato, senior legal advisor at the Independent Women’s Forum, said the group hopes Mosley’s situation will set “a precedent for other states to duplicate.” The forum has backed restrictions on access to gender-affirming care, and Mosley is a “detransition ambassador” for the group. The organization advocates on a variety of conservative political issues in addition to transgender rights, including immigration and tax policy.
“It’s important that we protect our children,” Parlato said. “… Doctors should not be allowed to be doing these surgeries and writing prescriptions for experimental hormones on children.”
Joshua Jernigan, founder of the Charlotte-area Gender Education Network, worries a new legal precedent would make it harder for transgender youth to access gender-affirming care by discouraging doctors from providing such treatments out of fear of being sued.
“The fewer people who provide that treatment, the harder it is for our kids to get into medical providers who are knowledgeable and who can help provide the safest and most accurate medical care,” he said.
Suit alleges medical malpractice
Mosley said she faces medical complications after receiving hormone therapy at 17 and undergoing a double mastectomy at 18, including chronic pain and fertility problems.
In a 2023 opinion piece published by Fox News, Mosley wrote she “had been lied to and misled in the worst possible way” by medical professionals as a teenager who “set me on a path of medicalized ‘gender transition.’” Mosley said she was sexually assaulted at 14, hospitalized for depression at 15 and ultimately diagnosed with “major depressive disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and an eating disorder.”
Representatives for Mosley said she was not available for an interview with The Charlotte Observer.
“They were told by their counselors in school and then they were told by their doctors that this is what they needed, when, in reality, if you sat down and listened to Prisha, if you listen to her story, what she needed was mental health counseling,” Parlato said.
Parlato said the Independent Women’s Forum expects a ruling on Mosley’s petition to reinstate her medical malpractice and negligence case by the end of August.
What is gender-affirming care?
Medical experts define gender-affirming care as a range of treatments to support people whose gender identity conflicts with the one assigned to them at birth. The care can — but does not always include — hormone therapy or surgeries.
The American Academy of Pediatrics says there’s “strong consensus among the most prominent medical organizations that gender-affirming care for transgender children and adolescents is medically necessary and appropriate.” The group adds that such treatment in kids and teens “does not necessarily lead to hormone therapy or surgery” and that “surgical interventions are generally reserved for those over 18 and are exceedingly rare for adolescents.”
Opponents such as Parlato and Mosley say such treatments are still experimental and shouldn’t be performed on minors who may not be able to give informed consent or understand the long-term impacts on their health and fertility.
The Endocrine Society, an organization representing physicians and scientists with expertise in the study of hormones, recommends against hormone therapy for pre-pubescent kids but supports hormone therapy for some adolescents diagnosed with gender dysphoria who are old enough to “exhibit physical changes of puberty.” The group also recommends patients be fully briefed on the impacts of hormone therapy on their fertility and meet with mental health professionals.
Jernigan, whose organization primarily works with transgender kids age 12 and under and their families, said gender-affirming care for most young kids is focused on mental health support and “social aspects” of the child’s life, such as a name or pronoun change.
North Carolina’s “test case”
Parlato says her organization will look to work with other state legislatures to pass similar legislation if Mosley’s case succeeds.
Jernigan, meanwhile, said “it’s important to hear those who didn’t have good experiences, or who felt like they were rushed into something.” But, he added, those experiences shouldn’t limit other people’s access to care.
Jernigan predicted Mosley’s claims will serve as a “test case to see what medical providers may have to face at some point” amid more scrutiny on gender-affirming care. He worries doctors will shy away from providing treatment if they’re facing ripple effects from a greater chance of being sued, such as higher costs for malpractice insurance.
“We’re seeing these agencies decide that it’s not worth the risk to their hospitals, because in the end, they have to have money in order to function, and if people can sue them for up to 10 years, it’s a scary concept,” he said.
Jernigan also worries about the mental health consequences for teens unable to get quality care. A 2022 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that youth who received gender-affirming care had a 60% lower chance of experiencing moderate or severe depression and a 73% lower chance of suicide risk compared with youth who did not.
“We see a lot of depression. And we see a lot of anxiety, people who aren’t sure how to go out into the world when they can’t get the care that they need to be who they are,” Jernigan said.
Health care access changes across the country
A study by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute found that more than 30 states “have restricted access to gender-affirming care or have considered laws that would do so” in recent years, meaning “an estimated 144,500 transgender youth and young adults ages 13 and older in the U.S. are at risk of being denied” treatment.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld many state-level bans on gender-affirming care for minors in June. The AMA said in a statement on that ruling it “opens the door to further intrusion into patient care and harmful government interference into the practice of medicine.”
The legal changes are already impacting health care access, including in North Carolina.
Atrium Health stopped providing gender-affirming medication for people 18 and younger, The Charlotte Observer reported previously, drawing condemnation from LGBTQ groups who said the decision was “based on fear of retaliation by hostile federal agencies or funding cuts.”
Parlato said restrictions on gender-affirming care for youth are necessary to protect those “too young to understand and to fully comprehend and to fully give their consent to surgeries and procedures that have lifelong consequences.”
Jernigan said limiting access to health care gets into “dangerous territory.”
“Legislation is making it so that the government gets to decide what is best medically for these families, which is kind of scary and dystopian in a way, because it’s the government deciding that they know better than the actual medical professionals who follow and treat this stuff,” he said.
This story was originally published August 20, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
