A lesbian Democrat with 15 years defending public interest law just lost her job for questioning whether children are being harmed by the very medical interventions her boss is racing to court to protect.
Story Snapshot
- Glenna Goldis, Assistant Attorney General in New York’s Consumer Frauds Bureau, was fired January 22, 2026, after raising concerns about pediatric gender-affirming medicine providers.
- Her termination followed months of escalating pressure after officials discovered her Substack blog critiquing gender ideology and its impact on LGBTQ youth.
- Attorney General Letitia James’s office prohibited Goldis from publishing anything that “conflicts” with James’s legal opinions, then fired her for “flagrant and repeated disregard” of office rules.
- Goldis frames her concerns as protecting gender-nonconforming gay adolescents from potential medical harms, while James leads multi-state litigation to shield the pediatric gender-affirming medicine industry from federal scrutiny.
- The case raises First Amendment questions about government employees’ rights to speak on public health matters when their views contradict leadership’s political positions.
When Protecting Kids Becomes a Fireable Offense
Glenna Goldis spent spring 2025 writing her Substack newsletter “Bad Facts” under a pseudonym, documenting what she viewed as a troubling pattern in gender-affirming care. Her research led her to conclude that healthcare providers have systematically misled patients since the 1950s about the consequences of medical transition. For someone working in the Consumer Frauds and Protection Bureau, the implications were impossible to ignore. Then her bosses discovered who was behind the blog, and her 15-year career in public interest law began spiraling toward an ultimatum she never saw coming.
The Ethics Council’s Expanding Reach
Officials at the New York Attorney General’s office informed Goldis they would review and approve all her public statements moving forward, citing Executive Order 6. By September 2025, the NYAG ethics council delivered its ruling. She could keep her blog, but with one non-negotiable condition: nothing she wrote could conflict with Attorney General James’s legal opinions. The restriction’s scope became clear when Goldis published analysis of the Supreme Court’s United States v. Skrmetti decision, which upheld Tennessee’s ban on pediatric gender medicine. General Counsel Kumiki Gibson informed her that these statements “directly contradict” James’s legal position and priorities.
The Fraud Investigator Investigating Fraud
The irony cuts deep. Goldis worked in a bureau dedicated to protecting New Yorkers from consumer fraud, yet when she raised concerns about what she characterized as “dangerous consumer fraud” in pediatric gender medicine, her office shut her down. She pointed to studies suggesting gender-affirming treatments cause sexual dysfunction, chronic genital pain, and incontinence in significant percentages of patients. Her position wasn’t rooted in religious conservatism or partisan politics. As a self-identified lesbian Democrat, she argued she was protecting the very LGBTQ youth the Attorney General claimed to champion, particularly gender-nonconforming gay adolescents who might be medicalized unnecessarily.
When Ideology Trumps Evidence
Attorney General James didn’t just disagree with Goldis’s assessment of pediatric gender medicine. She actively litigated to defend it, leading a multi-state lawsuit against the Trump administration to protect the industry from investigations and funding cuts. James went further, threatening doctors with legal liability if they declined to offer these treatments, declaring refusal constitutes “discrimination under New York law.” This created an impossible situation for Goldis: her professional obligation to investigate potential consumer fraud collided headlong with her boss’s commitment to shielding the very providers Goldis believed warranted scrutiny.
The Ultimatum and Its Aftermath
On January 15, 2026, the countdown began. Goldis received one week to comply with office rules, resign, or face termination. Seven days later, she was out. The office’s official statement accused her of “flagrant and repeated disregard” for protocols governing activities that “can impact the work, operations, or integrity of the office.” Goldis countered that she never disrupted operations. What she disrupted was ideological conformity. She’s now consulting with First Amendment experts about potential constitutional violations, transforming from a government attorney investigating fraud to a test case for whether public employees can speak about matters of urgent public concern when their conclusions threaten their superiors’ political agenda.
The Questions Nobody’s Answering
This case exposes fault lines that extend far beyond one fired attorney. Can state attorneys general demand total alignment with their legal positions from subordinates whose job involves investigating fraud? Do government employees forfeit First Amendment protections when their research leads them to conclusions their bosses find inconvenient? Most critically, when advocates claim to protect vulnerable populations, who gets to decide whether the protection causes more harm than the threat? Goldis argues she’s defending gay kids from irreversible medical interventions. James argues she’s defending those same kids’ access to life-saving care. Both claim the moral high ground. Only one had the power to end the debate by ending a career.
Sources:
Letitia James fires attorney over criticism of pediatric gender care
How a New York State Assistant Attorney General Was Fired
