Organizations Counter FTC’s Biased and Partisan Workshop with a Workshop Focused on Medical Truth and Consumer Protection

Washington, D.C., July 11, 2025

Yesterday, Public Knowledge, LGBT Tech, and Fight for the Future hosted a workshop titled “The FTC’s Culture War vs. Consumer Protection.” The event was a direct counterpoint to the Federal Trade Commission’s July 9 workshop, “The Dangers of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors,” where the agency misused their authority in an effort to undermine and delegitimize well-established medical practices, under the guise of consumer protection. The FTC’s workshop highlighted Chairman Ferguson’s willingness to exploit the agency’s consumer protection mandate in order to participate in a growing political effort to interfere in private decisions made between families and physicians. Former FTC officials noted that the agency barred public attendance, excluded dissenting perspectives, and amplified only anti-transgender voices. “Good government processes promote democratic engagement,” said 28-year FTC veteran and former Executive Director Eileen Harrington. “In contrast, authoritarian government processes only allow for one point of view – and that’s what we saw yesterday.”

In contrast, the July 10 workshop hosted a series of panel discussions and remarks from former FTC officials, parents of transgender youth, medical experts, and civil society advocates. These leaders corrected the record, reaffirmed the medical consensus and scientific evidence on care for transgender youth, and showed how the FTC can – and should – better serve some of the country’s most vulnerable consumers. Chris Wood, Executive Director of LGBT Tech, opened the day by emphasizing that the FTC’s true mandate is not cultural or political, but about defending consumer rights – including those of transgender and nonbinary people. “We need regulators who will step up and protect all consumers,” Wood stated. “We don’t need culture wars. We need consumer protection.” 

Underscoring the imminent harm posed by the FTC workshop, Wood said, “When government agencies tasked with protecting consumers divert their mandate to partisan narratives and ideological agendas, the consequences are not theoretical. They are immediate, measurable—and in this case, deadly.” 

Amy Paris, a seasoned digital services expert who served through five presidential administrations and most recently was U.S. Digital Services Lead at the Department of Health and Human Services, said, “Yesterday’s workshop had a predetermined, politically motivated outcome… I am going to say that this is what leads to a reduction in faith in participatory democracy and in the Republic.” Pointing to the broader implications of FTC overreach, she said, “Even if you disagree with the idea that transgender people deserve bodily autonomy, the right to make decisions about their medical care with their doctors, and if they’re minors, with their parents… what happens when it’s something else? What happens when it's a woman’s right to choose? What happens when it's your first or second amendment rights?”

By creating the illusion of a participatory workshop, the FTC has undermined the trust of the very people it serves. Pointing to the partisan nature of this workshop, Paris said, “No transgender people were involved in designing yesterday’s workshop, and no transgender person was included in the panels… Design with people, not for them.” Speaking about how we move forward from this, she said, “We have to recommit ourselves to a government that serves all people, not just the ones we agree with.”

Families and Medical Experts: Evidence, Not Fear

The workshop’s first panel, “Families and Frontline Experts Speak Out,” debunked the FTC’s claims against medical care for transgender youth and its purported harm to consumers. Moderated by nationally recognized health policy expert Dr. Kellan Baker, the panel brought in doctors and families of transgender youth who could accurately testify to the safe, established, and peer-reviewed best practices of medical care for transgender youth and the essential benefits they provide. Through their decades of medical and lived experience, the panel refuted the baseless claims made against medical care for transgender youth. Their stories highlighted how these treatments are approached only after extensive psychological evaluation, family conversations, and with full parental consent.

“It’s a long process,” said Ali, a mother of a transgender daughter. “If it weren’t the right thing to do for my daughter, I wouldn’t do it. If I didn’t have years of evidence that this was the best choice to make, I wouldn’t have done it.” Hans, a father of a transgender child, shared how his son’s journey involved family therapy and research. “When our son came out to us as trans, we did what most parents do: freak out. But we knew our kid – it wasn’t inconsistent with who he was.” 

Both parents spoke to the numerous steps that their families went through before their children began the process of receiving medical care – social changes (such as changing name or hairstyles), both individual and family counseling, and other non-medical interventions. “It is not a ‘show up and put you on blockers’ situation,” she said. “That is never how that happens. There are so many safety nets. If any of us at any time decided it wasn’t the right decision, we wouldn’t have done it.” Hans and his family had a similar experience. “We got him a therapist, and we would meet as a family, he would have solo sessions…after so many meetings, conversations, and research, it was clear that hormones were the right decision for him,” he said. “We had to go through a process as a family and with medical professionals.”

Medical professionals on the panel stressed that medical care for transgender youth is safe, effective, and guided by long-standing standards common across the entire field of pediatrics. Dr. Kade Goepferd noted, “There is no scientific debate about this, there is political debate about this care. All major medical associations in this country support this care because there are decades of trans people all having the same positive outcomes and all the evidence that shows that this care is life-saving.”  They also spoke about how “gender-affirming care” is not unique – it is simply healthcare. “It has come to bother me over time because I don’t talk about asthma treatment as pulmonary affirming care, or vaccines as immune-affirming care,” said Dr. Goepferd. “This is healthcare, healthcare that is essential and effective for these children.” 

Dr. Jeffrey Eugene and Dr. Goepferd also emphasized that care protocols for transgender youth are safe, well-established, and no different than best practices used for other pediatric care. “Puberty blockers are well-known, well-studied medications also used with cisgender kids.” The other doctor added that hormone replacement therapy (HRT), for youth who decide alongside their families and doctors to begin that course of treatment, is also incredibly safe. “The myth is that it’s harmful. The hormones we use, testosterone and estrogen, are actually safer than most medications because they are actually biologically identical to what is made in the body,” he said. “So there is no harm – there are actually wonderful benefits. It is one of the most meaningful parts of being a doctor, because everyone gets better. I’ve had patients that were suicidal, and with gender-affirming treatment, they begin to thrive. The family gets better.” 

All four panelists shared how important keeping families at the center of medical choices is, as well as their concerns about the government pushing to insert itself in the middle of those decisions. As put by Dr. Goepferd, “All parents deserve the right to be the medical decisionmakers for their children. All parents. I don’t want the government to interfere with us deciding what is best for our children.” Hans and Ali shared how they and other parents of transgender youth are increasingly terrified of the moves being made by the federal government to dictate their children's medical care. Hans said that he recently found his son was storing cash in case he had to flee the U.S. due to bans around transgender healthcare. Ali said that her daughter has been affected by the flood of anti-transgender healthcare content online, and has also begun to express concern about her future ability to access medically necessary care. “Our community is terrified,” said Hans, while discussing conversations he’s had with other parents of transgender youth. “Every single day someone in it is getting ready to leave this country because they can’t imagine a future in it.” 

Current and Former FTC Leaders: This is Not Your Lane

At today’s workshop, Former FTC Executive Director Eileen Harrington, Former FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, and FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter all spoke to the unprecedented actions by the FTC. Harrington argued in her remarks that the FTC has no authority to regulate private conversations between doctors and patients – in fact, the FTC itself has argued that that is beyond their jurisdiction. “The FTC argued in its briefs and oral arguments that it would not and should not assert its authority in doctor-patient relations,” said Harrington. “The practice of medicine in the U.S. is highly regulated by each state. There is also private enforcement through tort and malpractice suits. The FTC’s consumer protection mission does not extend to legal oversight to the relationship between patients and doctors.” She also noted that the FTC’s own complaint data offers no justification for its recent shift. “Out of more than six million complaints compiled in their 2024 report, there was no reference at all to gender-affirming care,” she said. She warned the agency is ignoring actual consumer harms – like data privacy breaches and financial scams – to chase political narratives. 

Former FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya and current FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter both condemned the agency’s current trajectory. Former Commissioner Bedoya lamented that, instead of protecting people from corporate abuse and scams, the FTC is “fighting the culture war to score political points.” Commissioner Slaughter, alongside previous remarks from Harrington, spoke to how unprecedented this week’s political exhibition by the FTC was. “What business is it of the FTC to get involved with the private medical decisions of individuals? And the structure was truly odd – there was no public comment or access (as is precedent with FTC workshops), [but] a taxpayer-funded steak and shrimp lunch?”

All three officials voiced their disdain for how the FTC spent its time the previous day, as well as the vitriol it demonstrated towards the transgender community. When reflecting on her role in creating the very first FTC workshops, Harrington shared, “Yesterday’s event bears little resemblance to what we created in 1992…the public was barred from in-person attendance, the FTC hand-picked who was allowed to speak, and they represented only one point of view, making it a propaganda platform.” Former Commissioner Bedoya said, “My message to transgender and nonbinary people is this: There is nothing wrong with you. Not one thing. I admire you. I respect you. You deserve the full protection of the law.” In her remarks, Commissioner Slaughter stated that “the vitriolic and dehumanizing sentiment repeated over and over was that it was impossible to be born into the wrong body, basically saying that it is impossible for trans people to exist. But I know they exist, they are my neighbors, they attend my synagogue… What the FTC did yesterday is an abomination, and on behalf of a once-great agency, I am so, so sorry.”

Privacy and Consumer Rights Experts: The FTC Must Refocus

In a panel moderated by LGBT Tech’s Director of Policy and Research, Shae Gardner, technology policy experts outlined what real consumer protection from the FTC could look like. This panel pointed to issues such as exploitative data brokers and identity theft as major threats that the FTC should prioritize rather than their politically motivated attempts to strip transgender people of essential healthcare. 

Speaking to the proper role of the FTC in healthcare, Alan Butler, the Executive Director & President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said, “The role of the FTC in healthcare has been and should be price regulation; they should investigate how pharmaceutical companies surveil and target consumers to extract maximal profits from them,” once again illustrating that the FTC’s attempt to intervene in discussions between doctors and their patients is unfounded and unprecedented.

While discussing the importance of privacy concerns from the LGBTQ+ community in an ever more concerning digital world, Matt Lane, Senior Policy Counsel at Fight for the Future, said, “These are life-and-death issues for LGBTQ+ people… Privacy is a universal right—but for some, losing it means violence, job loss, or family rejection.” When it comes to being outed to unsupportive family, being exposed to hateful content, or being doxxed by extremist organizations, queer people are especially vulnerable to the escalating threats of online privacy violations, making this attack by an agency tasked with protecting them the ultimate betrayal. 

The panel emphasized that the FTC must return to good governance. “Good process is the bedrock of democracy,” Eileen Harrington, former FTC Executive Director, said. “If the process is in bad faith, people will have good reason not to trust the government.” When people don’t trust the government, they don’t engage with the resources it has that are designed to help people, disrupting the social contract that keeps our democracy healthy. 

Harrington went even further, stating, “If I was in charge of the FTC, the workshop yesterday never would have happened. It wasn’t even a workshop.” Harrington insists that we should instead focus on more pressing threats to the American people:“I have been interested in the FTC’s silence on data security as DOGE has grabbed data from millions of Americans.” Harrington’s comments underscore that surveillance and algorithmic discrimination are imminent threats, especially to marginalized groups.

Support from Members of Congress

In pre-recorded video remarks, Representatives Maxwell Frost (FL-10) and Jamie Raskin (MD-08) offered forceful rebukes of the FTC’s July 9 workshop, warning that the agency’s actions represent a politicized misuse of federal authority that targets transgender youth and distracts from its core consumer protection mission.

Congressman Frost described the event as “very important counterprogramming to the bigoted and horrible... event that the FTC is hosting,” and apologized to LGBTQ+ staff forced to “endure this gross misuse of taxpayer dollars and gross misuse of what the FTC is supposed to be.” He accused the agency of advancing “this fascist and bigoted agenda where Donald Trump seeks to take the blame off billionaires and corporations and place it on the LGBTQ+ community... on immigrants... and people he wants to otherize and dehumanize.” Frost pushed back on this scapegoating, adding: “The reason [people] can’t pay their rent has nothing to do with a trans person… [It has] everything to do with corporations that are hiking up the rent week after week.” He urged action beyond words: “We sent a letter to the FTC on this… but what we really need is action.” He closed by saying plainly, “that’s what we need the FTC to focus on—not this bullshit bigoted agenda meant to appease Donald Trump.”

Congressman Raskin warned that the FTC’s event constituted “not only a witch hunt against children and their families, but it’s also way, way outside the FTC’s jurisdiction.” He emphasized that never before had the FTC intervened “between a patient and their doctor, much less parents and children,” and called the agency’s tactics “a ham-fisted, bludgeon approach to a public policy issue that is being dealt with just fine at the state level.” Raskin reminded viewers that the FTC is charged with addressing unfair and deceptive practices in interstate commerce—not second-guessing expert medical standards. “The FTC really should stay in its lane, stop these efforts to demonize the trans community, and they should certainly not be interfering between parents and children and doctors and patients.”

Closing Remarks: Upholding Dignity and Law

Chris Lewis, CEO of Public Knowledge and one of the key organizers behind this rapidly assembled event, closed the workshop by reaffirming the day’s central themes: respect for all citizens, the importance of public engagement, and the proper mandate of the Federal Trade Commission. Emphasizing the need to uphold bodily autonomy and dignity for all – regardless of age or gender identity – he warned, “The risk of the FTC being seen as a partisan actor could erode the public’s trust in its ability to create fair, nonpartisan protections.” He concluded with a firm commitment: “We’re going to continue that fight and support access to information for the LGBTQ+ community.”

A Call for Transparency & Public Input

Departing from thirty years of agency practice, the FTC did not open a docket for public comment in connection with its workshop. In response to the agency’s failure to provide this opportunity, civil society organizations announced that they will establish their own public comment docket, open for 60 days. The result will further develop the factual record arising out of these workshops so that legislators, regulators, and enforcement agencies can inform their decisions with rigorous data and the perspectives of all Americans.

Members of the public are encouraged to submit their comment at https://www.culturewarvsconsumerprotections.com by September 8, 2025.