WASHINGTON—The Federal Trade Commission has hired a lawyer fired by New York Attorney General Letitia James after she spoke out publicly against transgender procedures for children, The Daily Wire can first report.
Glenna Goldis will work as a senior litigator in the Bureau of Consumer Protection, a person familiar with the matter told The Daily Wire. She will spearhead investigations into any potential harms from so-called “gender affirming care.”
“Glenna is an extraordinary, brave, and intelligent woman with an impressive history of working on consumer protection matters,” said Joe Simonson, Director of Public Affairs at the FTC. “We are so excited to have her aboard.”
Goldis, a self-described “lefty lesbian lawyer,” previously served as assistant attorney general for James, who has earned a reputation for herself as one of the most liberal and anti-Trump attorneys general in the United States.
Goldis lost her position in James’ consumer fraud bureau after she spoke out against the dangers of so-called treatments like puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors. In July, The Daily Wire first reported that Goldis had participated in an FTC roundtable on transgender procedures in her private capacity.
“Today I was fired by NY Attorney General Letitia James for speaking out against pediatric gender medicine (PGM),” Goldis shared on X in late January. “I was an attorney in [New York Attorney General’s] consumer frauds bureau, which did not work on anything related to PGM. Since 2024 I’d been raising the alarm publicly and within NYAG that PGM providers may be engaged in a dangerous consumer fraud. James’s officials treated me like a pest.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Democracy Forward)
Goldis says that James’s team “struggled” to figure out what, exactly, was problematic about her public statements. They finally landed on Goldis’s writing on United States v. Skrmetti, a Supreme Court case dealing with transgender medical procedures for kids, and said that the lawyer’s work contradicted James’s legal position on the topic.
Her team reportedly told Goldis that she could not “take public legal positions that conflict” with James under the Rules of Professional Conduct. She contests this claim and accuses James of trying to cow her “into silence.”
A spokesman for James confirmed to The Daily Wire in late January that Goldis had been fired.
Andrew Ferguson, chair of the Federal Trade Commission (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“The Office of the Attorney General has rules and protocols for employees who engage in activities that can impact the work, operations, or integrity of the office,” the spokesman said at the time. “This employee’s flagrant and repeated disregard of these rules and protocols disrupts and undermines our efforts to protect the rights of all New Yorkers.”
In her new capacity at the FTC, Goldis will likely be an asset in the FTC’s investigation into whether minors and consumers have been harmed by transgender medical procedures — and whether medical professionals “have violated Sections 5 and 12 of the FTC Act by failing to disclose material risks associated with ‘gender-affirming care’ or making false or unsubstantiated claims about the benefits or effectiveness of ‘gender-affirming care.’”
In May, The Daily Wire first reported that the FTC would be holding a workshop on “gender-affirming care,” often a sign that the commission is preparing to initiate legal action against an industry.
“Under the Federal Trade Commission Act, the FTC is provided broad authority to protect consumers from unfair and deceptive trade acts and practices,” an FTC memo on the workshop said. “There is now considerable reason to believe that the doctors and medical providers pushing [gender-affirming care] on minors are knowingly deceiving parents by exaggerating [gender-affirming care’s] ‘benefits’ and downplaying its harmful side effects.”
The FTC held the workshop on July 9 and featured academics, commentators, parents, doctors, and detransitioners — young people who attempted to transition, spurred on by activists and medical professionals who falsely promised them that they could change their gender.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson told the detransitioners: “The FTC hears you, we hear all of you, and we want to understand how the law is being broken.”
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