Multiple Wisconsin School Districts Refer Students to UW Transgender Clinic

The School District of Janesville removed the clinic from its website after an inquiry

Six Wisconsin school districts have promoted the pediatric transgender clinic at UW Health as a resource for students. Three currently list the clinic on district-affiliated websites, and three others have done so in recent years, including one that removed it after an inquiry from The Madison Federalist.

The Pediatric and Adolescent Transgender Health (PATH) Clinic was founded in 2013 and quickly expanded to provide “services to children of all ages.” Treatments offered by PATH include “gender-affirming” hormone therapy, puberty suppression, and mental health counseling.

A July report from the advocacy group Defending Education found that the school districts in Beloit, Monona Grove, DeForest, Janesville, Madison, and Middleton have included the PATH Clinic as a resource on their websites.

While UW Health did not respond to media inquiries via email, phone, or text message, one medical expert condemned these districts for listing the PATH Clinic as a resource for students.

“Schools are meant to be centers of learning, not gateways to pediatric transgender clinics that offer puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones,” Do No Harm medical director Kurt Miceli told The Madison Federalist. “When school districts promote such clinics, they overstep their role and lead vulnerable children to unsafe and unproven interventions. Instead, schools should focus on academics and defer medical concerns to parents,” he said.

The School District of Beloit’s homepage includes a “Mental Health and Wellness Resource Guide” listing the PATH Clinic, which it describes as providing “education about medical care options for gender variant children” and offering “a full spectrum of care, from simple observation and guidance to hormone suppression and hormone affirming therapy for children of all ages.” The district did not respond to questions about the criteria or process that led to the clinic’s recommendation.

The Monona Grove School District lists the Glacial Drumlin School Gender and Sexuality Alliance on its website under “Equity Resources.” The alliance includes the PATH Clinic as a community resource on its website. District spokeswoman Katy Byrnes Kaiser said the link “is one of several that are included on a list of resources for families of students who have opted to participate in an after-school co-curricular activity.” She continued, “The list of resources is not a recommendation and does not constitute or imply approval and/or endorsement of any product, service, organization, or activity.” Kaiser said the purpose of the link “is to provide comprehensive information that may be helpful to families who may be seeking out this information.”

The DeForest Area School District listed the PATH Clinic alongside LGBTQ Primary Services at Group Health Cooperative, another clinic that offers transgender procedures, as recently as July. A spokesman said the district’s student services team made the decision to include PATH on its list of mental health resources, and “no outside organizations or advocacy groups were involved.” PATH was included on the list “because it’s an established local resource,” and both clinics were “recommended by our county as well as mental health providers our district partners with.” While neither clinic is still directly listed on the district’s website, the PATH Clinic is included on a district-provided LGBTQ+ Resource Flier.

The School District of Janesville listed the PATH Clinic on the resources page of its website as recently as September 18th. While the district did not respond to repeated requests for comment, the entire “LGBT Resources” section was removed shortly after an email from The Madison Federalist.

The Madison Metropolitan School District listed the PATH Clinic in an April 2018 resource guide called “Guidance & Policies to Support Transgender, Non-binary & Gender-Expansive Students.” While a district spokeswoman could not confirm that the guide is no longer in use, she noted that “this appears to be an old document and the superintendent listed is no longer here.”

Finally, a document obtained by Defending Education showed that the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District listed the PATH Clinic in an LGBTQ resource guide as recently as 2018. The district did not respond to inquiries about whether the guide is still in use.

According to Miceli, “Multiple factors have likely shaped school districts’ decisions to feature pediatric transgender clinics on their websites or counseling lists, including a faulty interpretation of Title IX as well as administrators’ attempts to be ‘inclusive,’ only to the detriment of the child. Activist pressure has also played an outsized role, often having gone unchallenged in the past.”

One notable Wisconsin activist group is GSafe, an organization that “advocates for just schools for LGBTQ+ youth,” which partnered with PATH to create the Transgender Youth Resource Network. The network “aims to provide education for medical and mental health providers, supports youth and families and advocates for accessible transgender care.”

Miceli said districts that promote the PATH Clinic prioritize “identity-driven agendas over the well-being of the child.” He continued, “When schools make medical referrals despite lacking clinical expertise, they undermine parental rights and may reinforce an identity driven by social influences.”

The UW Health pediatric gender team follows the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) standards of care. Some of those recommendations include “that health care professionals provide information to gender diverse children and their families/caregivers as the child approaches puberty about potential gender affirming medical interventions” and “health care professionals respond supportively to children who desire to be acknowledged as the gender that matches their internal sense of gender identity.”

In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to ban federal support for youth gender transitions. The order said WPATH “lacks scientific integrity” and instructed executive departments and agencies to “immediately take appropriate steps to ensure that institutions receiving Federal research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.” Sixteen states, including Wisconsin, are suing the White House to defend transgender procedures for children. While a federal judge blocked the enforcement of the federal funding cuts in the executive order, multiple hospitals have indefinitely suspended transgender procedures for children.

Shortly after the 2024 presidential election, the PATH Clinic updated its website with a statement that reads, “We know that this is a hard time for many of our LBGTQ+ patients and families. While we don’t know exactly how things will unfold and what lies ahead, we are committed to showing up for our patients in all the ways that we can and continuing to provide excellent, evidence-based, patient-centered care for our transgender, nonbinary and gender diverse patients.”

It is unclear whether the clinic has modified or suspended any treatment offerings in the past year. Its website included “chest masculinization surgery” until February 2025, but references to the procedure have since been removed.

Miceli called pediatric transgender clinic closures “a welcome development” and said they “represent a step toward safeguarding children from radical gender ideology and irreversible medical procedures that have caused harm to many.”