New York Attorney General Letitia James fired a consumer fraud lawyer final week after she sounded the alarm each publicly and throughout the state prosecutor’s workplace about pediatric “gender care” practitioners defrauding susceptible, younger purchasers.
Glenna Goldis, an attorney who has devoted her 15-year profession to practising public curiosity regulation, was terminated final Thursday from the workplace’s Consumer Frauds and Protection Bureau following a monthslong battle with the worker ethics committee.
The standoff centered on the now-former assistant attorney basic’s public and inside castigation of pediatric gender medication.
Goldis, a specialist in prosecuting misleading enterprise practices, repeatedly raised fraud-related issues relating to exploitative patterns that she had recognized within the PGM trade, a lot to the chagrin of her boss, James, a staunch supporter of transgender procedures carried out on kids.
“James was wrong to treat me like a pest,” Goldis stated in a scathing social media publish asserting her termination. “I was trying to warn her about red flags for fraud that I saw around PGM—that’s what she hired me to do.”
Goldis famous that she is a lesbian, half of “the LGBTQ community that James purports to champion,” and out of concern for gender-nonconforming homosexual adolescents, she tried to clarify to NYAG officers that “PGM, by its nature, targets children who defy sexed norms — whom studies show are more likely to be gay when they grow up.”
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“No one in authority at NYAG showed interest in the concern that PGM may be homophobic,” Goldis stated. “If Letitia James actually cared about ‘LGBTQ’ youth, then she’d research ‘gender’ drugs and learn what they do. Instead, she glibly calls the drugs ‘safe’ and fires me for contradicting her.”
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Goldis stated that just about any substantive talks she tried to have with the NYAG’s workplace about fraud markers surrounding PGM and malpractice issues devolved into threats of disciplinary motion.
“It was hard to have any conversation at all,” Goldis stated. “Most of the back and forth was about whether I should be disciplined. It was kind of surreal, like I would want to talk about pediatric gender medicine and they would want to talk about discipline.”
Disciplinary process paperwork shared with the Washington Examiner present that Goldis obtained a number of warnings from her higher-ups to cease talking critically concerning the PGM sector.
Goldis, the creator of a Substack weblog primarily discussing authorized points associated to gender ideology, beforehand wrote underneath a pseudonym.
NYAG officers caught wind of it within the spring of 2025, telling Goldis that the company must evaluate all the pieces she desires to jot down or talk about publicly and that they might determine what was acceptable, in accordance with Executive Order 6.
“This is a really overbroad policy that I thought violated the First Amendment, because government workers have the right to free speech,” Goldis advised the Washington Examiner. “[The government] can’t just totally control what you say outside of work. There are limits.”
Still, she submitted a disclosure type requesting permission to jot down the weblog, however didn’t hear again for soem time.
In June, she was invited to look earlier than the Federal Trade Commission as a panelist to clarify the harms of PGM from a consumer fraud perspective.
Goldis, wanting to simply accept the invitation, requested prior approval in accordance with the coverage, however the NYAG’s workplace denied her petition. She tried to enchantment the choice however struggled to interrupt by means of the pink tape in time and wound up talking on the roundtable anyway.
Goldis spoke concerning the risks of pediatric gender medication at an FTC roundtable on July 9, 2025. (YouTube)
On the eve of the July occasion, Goldis emphasised on-line that she was talking strictly in a private capability, not on behalf of her employer. Up till that point, Goldis had by no means hooked up her work title to her advocacy, and on this occasion, she specified that her views represented her personal. The company stated her disclaimer made no distinction.
“So then the office was going to discipline me for disobeying their instructions,” Goldis recalled.
Over a sequence of conferences, the company questioned Goldis about all her outdoors actions, together with which podcasts she had appeared on, which journalists she had spoken with, and the place she blogs.
That summer season, the NYAG’s basic counsel lastly discovered an objectionable line in a single of Goldis’s weblog posts, titled Free to Ban. In it, Goldis laid out the Supreme Court’s ruling on United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld a Tennessee regulation banning PGM statewide.
Kumiki Gibson, basic counsel on the NYAG’s workplace, advised Goldis that her statements, significantly the place she merely states the Supreme Court’s holding, “directly contradict” James’s authorized place, priorities, and prerogatives. Gibson quoted a passage of her Substack piece explaining that the excessive court docket determined that such bans are “not discriminatory” on the premise of so-called transgender standing.
James, who at present leads a multi-state lawsuit towards the Trump administration to guard the PGM trade from investigations and funding cuts, has threatened to carry medical doctors legally accountable for declining to supply PGM, arguing that doing so is “discriminatory.” In one decree, James declared that medical suppliers refusing such companies to gender-confused minors constitutes “discrimination under New York law.”
FILE – New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks throughout a press briefing, Feb. 16, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
“I wish to reiterate in writing,” Gibson stated in an August letter addressed to Goldis, “the Office’s right to regulate public comments made by members of its staff and to remind you of your obligations as both a government employee and a lawyer subject to the New York State Rules of Professional Conduct.”
Gibson stated the federal government is properly inside its authority to “restrict, forbid, or sanction public employees’ speech, even when such speech involves matters of public concern.”
In a September discover despatched to Goldis, the NYAG’s ethics chief decided that she will hold her Substack weblog however dictated that she can not say or write something that “conflicts” with James’s authorized opinions.
The ethics council chairman likewise cited the state’s skilled conduct guidelines, which Goldis countered say no such factor about taking “public legal positions that conflict with” these of her employer.
“It seemed he was trying to protect James by cowing me into silence,” she stated.
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On Jan. 15, Goldis was given an ultimatum: abide by the workplace’s phrases, resign throughout the week, or face termination. Goldis selected to not stand down, letting the deadline go. She was abruptly fired the next week.
In an announcement, James’s workplace accused Goldis of “flagrant[ly]” flouting office procedures and interesting in conduct that undercuts the attorney basic’s work.
“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,” a spokesperson for James advised the Washington Examiner. “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.”
As for her official fireable offense, the NYAG’s workplace concluded that Goldis engaged in “disruptive public speech.”
An expert headshot of Goldis. (Courtesy of Glenna Goldis)
“Unfortunately, that’s not true,” Goldis stated. “I haven’t disrupted the Democratic elite’s zombie-like devotion to PGM providers. But I’m just getting started.”
Goldis, a Brooklyn-based Democrat, stated her social circles are full of progressive attorneys who, like many Americans, are usually leery of PGM, however as a result of leaders on the Left deal with the struggle like a battle of “good versus evil,” that makes unusual individuals afraid to voice skepticism.
“James’s behavior toward me illustrates why the public discussion of PGM is often one-sided in places like NYC—and so strikingly different from what you hear behind closed doors,” Goldis stated.
After shedding her job, Goldis stated she is in contact with constitutional regulation consultants to advise her on subsequent steps and see if the NYAG’s restrictions on her outdoors communications violated her free speech rights.
Praising her colleagues’ work, Goldis stated she was honored to serve within the consumer safety unit. “I hope someday they’ll investigate PGM providers,” she added.
