A Patient’s Right to Gender Therapy Custody Case Won by Ohio Teen

Sabrina Samone, TMP

A Cincinnati teen won a groundbreaking case that would relinquish parental custody from his parents and given by court order, to his more supportive grandparents. A local Judge on Friday gave custody of a transgender teen to his grandparents in order to allow them to make medical decisions regarding his transition.

His biological parents are not supportive of the 17-year-old’s decision to begin hormone therapy¹ to transition from their assigned birth as female to male, as the young man identifies. The parents also have refused to call him by his chosen name, which has triggered suicidal feelings, according to court testimony. The parents wanted to maintain custody in order to make medical decisions for the teen and prohibit the treatment that his medical team had recommended. According to the parents’ attorney who cited the parents are against treatment as it violates ‘their’ religious beliefs.

Judge Sylvia Sieve Hendon has instructed media that the families names not be relased, due in part it being a case involving a minor and privacy. The ruling says that in addition to receiving custody, the grandparents can petition to change the child’s name in probate court, as is the wishes of the teen. Their grandchild will also, now be covered by their insurance.

The grandparents, rather than the parents, will be the ones to help make medical decisions for the child going forward. Before any hormone treatment is to be allowed, the court also ordered, the teen should be evaluated by a psychologist who is not affiliated with the current facility where he is receiving treatment, on “the issue of consistency in the child’s gender presentation, and feelings of non-conformity.”

A team at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, where the teen has been treated since 2016, advised the court that he should start treatment as soon as possible to decrease his suicide risk.

In the custody decision, Hendon said, the parents will have visitation rights and are “encouraged to work toward a reintegration of the child into the extended family”

She also encouraged Ohio lawmakers to create legislation giving judges a framework they can evaluate a patient’s right to gender therapy.

“What is clear from the testimony presented in this case and the increasing worldwide interest in transgender care is that there is certainly a reasonable expectation that circumstances similar to the one at bar are likely to repeat themselves,” she wrote. “That type of legislation would give a voice and a pathway to youth similarly situated as (the teen) without attributing fault to the parents and involving them in protracted litigation which can and does destroy a family’s unity.”


  1. Resources for Parents and Youth transitioning.
  2. Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital
  3. West Virginia System of Care, state support info for nearby West Virginia LGBTQ youth and families

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