Lawsuit Alleges Oregon Health Authority Illegally Withheld Data on Child Sex Changes

The Oregon Health Authority is facing a lawsuit for allegedly withholding data on child sex change interventions, in violation of the First Amendment.

The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) maintains a program, the All Payer All Claims (APAC) reporting program, designed to provide the public and policymakers with important healthcare information. Through APAC, the OHA collects healthcare claims and enrollment data, as well as other data related to healthcare costs and utilization.

Oregon law requires the OHA to make APAC data available to healthcare consumers in order to empower them to make informed healthcare decisions.

In February 2025, Paul Terdal, a visiting fellow at Do No Harm, requested APAC data for the purposes of researching “the efficacy and incidence of gender-related medical treatments for children.” Terdal is a volunteer health consumer advocate who has been advocating for access to safe mental and behavioral healthcare for 20 years.

Terdal’s consultancy, Terdal Consulting, had previously requested APAC data from the OHA and had those requests approved.

However, the OHA denied the February request, justifying its decision on the grounds that releasing the data would violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA.

This excuse, the lawsuit alleges, doesn’t add up. While HIPAA is intended to protect patients’ personal health information, the lawsuit states that the data in question meets all the statutory de-identification requirements.

Moreover, according to the lawsuit, the OHA had received 25 requests for APAC since 2020, and had fulfilled each and every one – that is, until Terdal’s request, which just so happened to involve the politically fraught issue of child sex change interventions. If the APAC data does not comply with HIPAA, as the OHA claims, then the OHA would have needed to report breaches of protected information for each past release, per federal regulations. Yet the OHA has not reported any such breaches.

Internal OHA emails, obtained through a public records request, show that OHA staff and executives were concerned about Terdal’s past statements to the media and legislators, and about the “risk” that he would do so again.  Before declaring their own database to be out of compliance with HIPAA, they debated requiring him to sign a contract restricting publication of his results or redacting the database to prevent him from completing his research.

And there’s another wrinkle; Terdal has long advocated against Oregon health authorities’ endorsement of the discredited WPATH SOC-8 as the state’s official “standard of care” for treatment of pediatric gender dysphoria, arguing that it lacked sufficient evidentiary backing. Terdal’s advocacy culminated in a lengthy exposé by the Lund Report, detailing how the OHA silenced its own experts’ concerns about the clinical evidence and integrity of the research behind WPATH.

In addition, Terdal recently authored an article in National Review, citing OHA data to show evidence of pediatric medical transition, including surgical procedures.

“In 2021, the Oregon Health Authority provided me with a copy of its insurance claims database for the year 2019. The database covers the private health insurance and Medicaid payments for all medical procedures of 92 percent of the state’s population. This includes gender-affirming treatment. In 2019, two biological girls had their ovaries and uteruses removed because of their gender distress. They were just 17 years old. Four 18-year-olds also received genital surgeries.”

The lawsuit alleges that the denial of Terdal’s request was politically motivated and is evidence of viewpoint discrimination; by denying Terdal the ability to engage in constitutionally protected speech, the OHA violated Terdal’s First Amendment rights.

“Oregon’s officials don’t have to agree with me, but they simply cannot use the power of the state to punish me or to deny me information that will help Oregonians make up their own minds,” Terdal told The Center Square.

Do No Harm agrees. This information should be available to all, so that policymakers and the public alike can take the necessary steps to protect children from the harms of dangerous, experimental medical interventions.