Indiana
Rokita’s office enlists DC firm to investigate if doctors misrepresent trans care risks
Indiana family advocates for 10-year-old daughter
Beth and Nathaniel Clawson are advocating for their 10-year-old daughter as Indiana passes laws targeting trans youth.
Jenna Watson, Indianapolis Star
The Indiana Attorney General’s Office has contracted with a conservative Washington D.C.-based law firm to help the state investigate claims of healthcare providers misrepresenting the risks of gender transition care and procedures to their patients of any age.
The agency, led by Attorney General Todd Rokita, signed an agreement in November with Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, which allows the firm to investigate claims of such cases for the office’s consumer protection division and to help defend the state’s existing laws on gender affirming care.
Under the contract, which runs through March 2025, Cooper & Kirk is able to investigate claims of misrepresentation tied to gender affirming care for both adults and minors, despite no state law barring any procedures or care for adults.
The contract appears to only require payment from the state if the firm helps win a case with monetary judgment. As of late January the Attorney General’s Office said it had not made any payments to the firm.
The agreement between Rokita’s office and Cooper & Kirk, which helped Indiana in its case against social media app TikTok, continues the attorney general’s recent scrutiny of healthcare organizations that provide gender affirming care to young Hoosiers in the wake of the Indiana General Assembly’s 2023 debate and ban of such care for minors.
Letters sent last March
In March 2023, as lawmakers debated the bill that would ban gender affirming care for minors, Rokita sent letters to medical facilities around the state that alleged clinics misrepresented the risks of gender transition procedures to minor patients, likening the care to child abuse.
Eskenazi Health, Indiana University Health and a clinic in Goshen — medical facilities that responded to Rokita’s request last year —were essentially subpoenaed for more information about transgender care for minors at their facilities, according to reporting by the Indiana Capital Chronicle. Indiana University Health in a statement last year told IndyStar it did not perform gender affirming surgeries on minors, but it did provide other kinds of evidence-based care to youth.
A judge in November denied an ask from those healthcare institutions to stop Rokita’s requests, known as civil investigative demands. In January, the Attorney General’s Office filed to dismiss the case after it resolved a dispute on the requested information.
From 2023: Holcomb signs bill banning transgender surgeries, puberty blockers for minors
Gender affirming care covers a range of treatments, including medical and psychological ones, that support a person’s gender identity, according to the World Health Organization.
Republican lawmakers in states around the country in recent years have taken steps to ban these types of procedures for minors, including the 2023 bill in Indiana. That law is blocked while the federal case, which is now a class action lawsuit, challenging the legislation continues.
Do providers share risks?
Rokita is not the only Republican Attorney General pursuing information about transgender medical cases. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton late last year sent letters to medical providers in Georgia and Washington seeking records of Texas minor patients who received gender affirming care, according to the Texas Tribune. Seattle Children’s Hospital sued the Texas Attorney General’s Office in December to block release of that information.
A spokesperson for Rokita’s office told IndyStar in December that the agency is concerned about gender transition procedures and whether patients, both minors and adults, could be “deceived, abused or treated unfairly by medical providers.”
The spokesperson, who did not provide examples, said “it has been publicly reported” that medical providers prescribe “puberty blockers, sex hormones and surgeries” to patients without disclosing risks.
When asked whether Indiana has received allegations of medical providers failing to disclose risks of gender affirming care, the spokesperson directed IndyStar to file a public records request.
A national group of scientists and medical providers focused on treatment and research tied to hormones told IndyStar there are clear guidelines for practitioners that emphasize the importance of fully informing patients about the side effects of gender affirming care.
The Endocrine Society in a statement said it has a clinical practice guideline for health professionals with recommendations stating that transgender and gender-diverse adolescents should be “informed fully” about risks before care, citing the potential for adverse effects on fertility preservation options as examples of what patients can experience.
“The Society’s Clinical Practice Guideline recommends proceeding with treatment as conservatively as possible to give transgender and gender-diverse youth and their parents time to consider their options,” The Endocrine Society said.
Cooper & Kirk cases
The Cooper & Kirk law firm is not new to work with the Indiana Attorney General’s Office nor legal efforts critical of transgender people.
Cooper & Kirk attorneys in 2023 filed a lawsuit on behalf of parents at a Virginia Beach school to force the district to comply with the state’s Republican governor’s policies on limiting accommodations for transgender students, according to the Associated Press.
The firm dropped the lawsuit in October after the school district voted for rules that align with the governor’s requirements, the AP reported.
The law firm has three active contracts with the Indiana Attorney General’s Office, including the contract on investigating gender affirming care cases. The other contracts are tied to Rokita’s lawsuit against TikTok and a general agreement with the firm to help the state in general litigation matters.
The Attorney General’s Office has not had to make any payments to Cooper & Kirk for any of the current contracts. Under the TikTok and gender affirming care contracts, the law firm would receive a certain percentage of any monetary judgments it helps the state win in legal cases, starting at 25% of any dollar amount recovered between $2 million and $10 million.
Rokita sued TikTok in 2022 over allegations the app does not protect children from mature content and that it deceives users about the Chinese government’s ability to access data. The case was dismissed by a state superior court judge in November.
In 2023: Indiana judge tosses out Todd Rokita’s lawsuit of ‘hyperbolic allegations’ against TikTok
The attorney general’s office’s contract with Cooper & Kirk plans for the law firm to help defend the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The state continues to defend the law against a legal challenge brought by the ACLU of Indiana.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit in April just hours after Gov. Eric Holcomb signed the bill into law. A federal judge temporarily blocked portions of the law in June through an injunction that states Indiana is unable to prohibit treatments for minors while the lawsuit is ongoing. The judge in January approved making the case a class action lawsuit.
As of late January, a trial on the lawsuit is scheduled for April 2025.
IndyStar archives contributed to this story. Contact IndyStar’s state government and politics reporter Brittany Carloni at brittany.carloni@indystar.com or 317-779-4468. Follow her on Twitter/X @CarloniBrittany.
INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana Fever are two games into the season, and they already know they have a lot to figure out.
In the first two games of one of the most anticipated seasons in history, the Fever lost by 21 on the road to the Connecticut Sun, then returned home to the wrong side of a 36-point drubbing, 102-66, against the New York Liberty on Thursday at a sold-out Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
“You don’t win a lot of games in this league when you only score 66 points, but also you don’t want a lot of games giving up 102,” said Indiana coach Christie Sides. “So we’ve got a lot to figure out.”
More: Fever are loaded with offensive talent. But they have to figure out how to use it.
To give the Fever some (if any) credit, they went up against two of the most experienced teams in the league. The Sun don’t have a rookie on their roster, and their core of DeWanna Bonner, Alyssa Thomas and Brionna Jones have been playing with each other for over four years.
In addition to Sabrina Ionescu, New York has Breanna Stewart, Courtney Vandersloot and Jonquel Jones — all of whom are seasoned veterans who joined the Liberty in 2023, appearing in the WNBA finals.
These players know what they’re doing. They have a connection that can only be forged with time — something the Fever don’t have any advantage in.
“Our communication just has to increase, especially when you’re playing teams that know each other like the back of their hand,” said Fever second-year center Aliyah Boston.
The Fever have two starters who are completely new to the team and system: Katie Lou Samuelson and Caitlin Clark. Samuelson, a five-year veteran, came to Indiana after a year off because of pregnancy. Clark is coming to the Fever as the No. 1 pick, fresh off a Final Four season with Iowa.
With the Fever, there’s just not the same chemistry other, more-veteran teams, will have. Still, some of it comes down to effort and communication.
“I think there’s quite a bit that we need to learn about each other and about ourselves,” Samuelson said following Thursday’s loss. “But if we can dig deep, and play as hard as we can, as tough as we can for 40 minutes, we can probably make up for some of that. But we have lapses where things just escalate, and you can see this kind of dip.
“So it really comes down to just playing with a lot more energy, playing harder, communicating louder, little things that we shouldn’t be saying in this press conference right now, but that’s really the stuff we need to take care of.”
It takes time to get a team working together as well as the Sun and the Liberty. But, Sides said, the Fever are also missing some things that have nothing to do with how long a team has been together.
“It’s a process, but there’s a level when it just gets too much, when people are just continuing to punch you,” Sides said. “We’ve got to figure out how to stop them and give it right back to them. And we’re just not matching that.
“We’ve just got to get an attitude a little bit when people score on us,” she added. “You just can’t let it be so easy to just let them do what they want to do on us. It all goes back to just having a little bit of fight, passion, toughness.”
The Fever’s schedule isn’t doing them any favors. They start the season with two games each against the Sun, who reached the playoff semifinals last season, and finals runner-up Liberty. Five of their first seven games are on the road, and they play all seven within a 12-day stretch.
It’s challenging, no doubt, but it’s also not an option. The Fever are going to have to work through this gauntlet of a schedule, both travel- and competition-wise.
“You just have to do what you have to do to recover, and take the time when you get it,” Boston said. “We don’t really have that many days of a break in between games, and so we just have to be ready and recover.”
The reality of the situation is the Fever are 0-2, and their 57-point deficit through two games are the most to begin the season in league history (per ESPN Stats). Drafting Clark will be a franchise-changing move for the Fever, but they weren’t going to come out and beat some of the best teams in the league out of the gate.
A’ja Wilson was the Las Vegas Aces’ second-straight No. 1 draft pick in 2018, following Kelsey Plum. That 2018 Aces team went 14-20 and missed the playoffs, getting the top pick for the third straight draft. Now, Las Vegas are the back-to-back champions and Wilson has won two MVP titles.
If history is any indication, Clark and the Fever are going to be fine. They’re going to be good, or even great. But building chemistry doesn’t happen overnight, and success isn’t instant.
Follow IndyStar Fever Insider Chloe Peterson on X at @chloepterson67.
Indiana
To strengthen cybersecurity, local governments need to get over their skepticism, Indiana CIO says | StateScoop
Indiana Chief Information Officer Tracy Barnes said local government leaders express a wide range of emotions when it comes to cybersecurity initiatives: excitement, mundane interest, suspicion, but mostly — skepticism.
“They’re skeptical, they’re excited, they’re paranoid, but they’re interested in cybersecurity training initiatives, Barnes told StateScoop this month at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers midyear conference in National Harbor, Maryland. “But as they started to see more and more folks adopting get on board, and some of the skeptics start to kind of turn and open their minds a bit more, and they also start to see more of that push from the legislative body as well.”
Barnes said strengthening cybersecurity in local government loses momentum when local leaders push back for fear of a surveillance state. But when he encounters resistance, Barnes said, he reminds the skeptics that Indiana’s technology department is there to provide support.
“We have no desire to police and manage and maintain footprints across the entire scope of local governments in Indiana,” Barnes said. “But we do have the ability for the size, the engagement, the relationships with vendors, and such, to bring good products at a table reading, and good resources that they can take advantage of.”
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — It was not the smoothest debut for Caitlin Clark on Tuesday night. She set the record for most amount of turnovers in a WNBA debut with 10. But, she did finish with 20 points and knocked down four threes, which was also a record.
She joined Maya Moore and Edna Campbell as the only players in WNBA history to score 20 points and make four three pointers in their debut.
Now, she returns to Indianapolis for her regular season home debut on Thursday, when the Fever play the New York Liberty.
“I guess I’m just excited for Thursday to get back home and have our home opener,” Clark said after the game on Tuesday.
The home crowd should be packed on Thursday night with Fever fans. Their preseason game against the Atlanta Dream set a Fever attendance record for a preseason game, with 13,028 fans in the building. The Fever averaged just over 4,000 fans per game last season.
“Any time you can have a home opener and have the support that we’ve had, our preseason game was tremendous and now we get to for real,” Clark said. “I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s going to be loud. We’re going to need to use the environment to our advantage and I think just learn and move on and get ready to play. Embrace it and enjoy it because it is special, too.”
While it was not the ideal regular season debut, Clark did play better in the fourth quarter. She scored eight points and knocked down two three-pointers.
It was a rough first game for the team as a whole as well. They turned the ball over 25 times and allowed the Sun to shoot over 42% from three-point range. All-Star and 2023 Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston was shut down as well, scoring just four points on 2-6 shooting.
The Fever home opener on Thursday will be against the New York Liberty, who lost in the WNBA Finals last year. They also have the reigning WNBA MVP, Breanna Stewart.
The game will tip off at 7 p.m.
Stay updated with WISH-TV‘s live coverage from Gainbridge Fieldhouse starting at 5 p.m.
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