OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
4:19 PM – Monday, February 2, 2026
A Westchester County jury has delivered a landmark verdict in the case of 22-year-old Fox Varian, awarding her $2 million after finding her former medical team liable for malpractice. This marks the first time a “detransitioner” lawsuit in the U.S. has successfully gone to a jury trial and resulted in a plaintiff victory.
Varian, a biological female, struggled with gender dysphoria as a minor and later chose to identify as a transgender male, undergoing both social and medical transition. However, she eventually stopped transitioning and returned to identifying with her biological sex as her mental health symptoms improved.
At the time of her transition, Varian had briefly used the name Rowan.
According to court reports and news coverage, Varian detransitioned roughly three years after her double mastectomy, which is referred to as “top surgery,” at around age 19. After living with regret and reevaluating her identity, she ceased identifying as male and resumed identifying with her biological sex well before filing her lawsuit in 2023.
In a decision handed down on Friday, a six-member jury ruled that psychologist Dr. Kenneth Einhorn and plastic surgeon Dr. Simon H. Chin deviated from the accepted medical standard of care. The verdict found the practitioners negligent for facilitating a double mastectomy for Varian in 2019, when she was a 16-year-old minor.
A double mastectomy is a surgical procedure that removes both breasts. Risks include bleeding and infection, while side effects can involve pain, swelling, numbness, and limited arm movement. Recovery time can take months to return to full activity.
The three-week trial centered on the doctors’ “model of care.” Varian’s legal team argued that the doctors “fast-tracked” her toward irreversible surgery while ignoring a complex web of pre-existing mental health and neurological conditions. According to court testimony, then-16-year-old Varian was struggling with anorexia and body dysmorphia, depression and ADHD, and autism spectrum disorder.
The jury agreed with the plaintiff’s argument that these conditions should have been “well-controlled” and thoroughly explored as potential drivers of her gender distress before any surgical intervention was approved. The court found the defendants failed to perform an adequate differential diagnosis, essentially “skipping important steps” in the evaluation process.
A key moment in the trial came when Varian’s mother, Claire Deacon, took the stand. She recounted that she had initially opposed the surgery but was ultimately pressured into giving consent by Dr. Einhorn. Deacon testified that the psychologist employed “scare tactics,” warning that without the procedure, her daughter faced a high risk of suicide — framing the surgery as essential for her daughter to have any chance at a full, happy life.
The defense countered that Varian had independently expressed ideations of self-harm and that the medical team was acting in accordance with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) standards.
However, the jury found that the doctors failed to adequately communicate with one another and failed to provide Varian with a full understanding of the “risks, hazards, and alternatives” of the procedure.
Meanwhile, the jury’s compensation package reflects both the physical and emotional toll Varian described during her testimony.
| Legal damage | Amount given |
| Past and future pain & suffering | $1,600,000 |
| Future medical expenses | $400,000 |
| Total verdict | $2,000,000 |
“It’s so hard to face that you are disfigured for life,” she said. “No amount of reconstruction is ever going to bring back what I lost.”
Varian learned through painful experience that surgery could not permanently change her sex, but it did leave her with lasting scars, loss of sensation, nerve pain, and the irreversible knowledge that she will never be able to nurse an infant child.
Following the verdict, many legal analysts suggest the “Varian Verdict” is a watershed moment for pediatric gender medicine. Previously, many similar cases were dismissed or settled because they were framed as “culture war” issues.
Analysts say that the Varian case succeeded by sticking to a traditional medical malpractice framework: it didn’t argue whether transition is “right or wrong,” but whether these specific doctors were negligent in treating this specific patient. In the future, insurers may begin to hike premiums or stop covering pediatric gender surgeries altogether to avoid the risk of similar multi-million dollar “detransition” payouts.
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