(Lydia Nicholson | Student Life)

Former WashU employee Jamie Reed sued the University on Nov. 3, alleging unlawful retaliation and harassment that forced her to resign after she publicly accused its transgender clinic of providing substandard care to minors and committing insurance fraud. 

Reed, a former case manager at the now-defunct Washington University Pediatric Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, filed the whistleblower lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. It includes three counts of retaliation under federal and Missouri whistleblower laws and one count of failure to provide required COBRA health insurance continuation notices. 

She is seeking reinstatement or front pay as well as back pay, damages, statutory penalties, and attorneys’ fees, and she has requested a jury trial. Both Associate Vice Chancellor for University Communications Kedra Tolson and Reed’s attorney Michael Martinich-Sauter of James Otis Law Group did not respond to a request for comment by publication time. The allegations have not yet been tested in court. 

The transgender center opened in 2017 through WashU’s medical school, with one arm serving adults and the other, located at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, serving patients under the age of 18. Today, the clinic only provides mental health support and education to minors due to the Missouri SAFE Act, which banned gender-affirming medical care for minors. 

The center no longer operates as a single physical clinic and instead refers to a collection of specialists in endocrinology and psychology who provide “health care for transgender and non-binary people in a welcoming, affirming environment,” according to its website.

Reed worked at the center from July 2018 until November 2022, when she transferred to the Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology. In February 2023, she submitted a sworn affidavit to then Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and published an op-ed in The Free Press detailing what she called “morally and medically appalling” treatment at the clinic.

In the affidavit, she alleges that children were being routinely prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy without “appropriate or accurate” mental health assessments.

She said the center’s providers “regularly refer minors for gender transition surgery,” despite the University’s public statements.

She also said the center started more than 600 children on medical transition between 2020 and 2022, mostly paid for by private insurance, and that, to her understanding, it also billed state and federal publicly funded insurance programs. Reed claims she personally witnessed staff report that doctors were entering incorrect treatment codes to get unnecessary procedures covered, and that staff were dismissed upon voicing discomfort with how they were told to code those bills. 

Her allegations prompted a multi-agency investigation that became the catalyst for the Missouri SAFE Act. Separately, the results of an internal WashU review overseen by an independent committee were released in April 2023, which concluded that Reed’s allegations were “unsubstantiated,” though it also announced stricter policies on parental consent and surgical practices.

After the state ban passed, the clinic stopped providing transition treatments for minors in fall 2023. In July 2024, it officially ceased operations altogether.

The lawsuit goes further, alleging the center’s physicians used inaccurate diagnosis codes to make treatment appear medically necessary so insurers, including Medicaid, would cover it. It acknowledges that Reed was never personally directed to submit a false claim.

According to the suit, Reed raised concerns internally for years before going to the attorney general. Her 2020-21 performance review fell below “Achieves Expectations” because of her “communication style,” which she says meant copying the center’s directors on emails about patient care. A verbal warning was issued in February 2022, which also delayed her ability to leave the center for nine months under University transfer policy. At a late-summer 2022 staff retreat, she and a colleague were told to “get on board or get out,” according to the suit. 

It also describes an incident in which a center physician allegedly blocked the doorway of a small office and shouted at Reed for more than ten minutes until she agreed not to file an adverse-event report about a patient who needed emergency surgical repair after bleeding. 

After colleagues learned she was the whistleblower in February 2023, the suit says, her new department turned hostile. It alleges coworkers hung transgender pride flags and a banner of testimonials that ended at her cubicle, excluded her from vacation-coverage emails, and refused to cover her shifts. It also says she was removed from an OutMed event in November 2023 and that a campus barista refused to serve her. Faculty members, the suit adds, publicly attacked her credibility, calling her an “intake coordinator with no specialized training.”

Reed resigned on April 1, 2024, citing a “very difficult and hostile work environment.” She alleges the University then cut off her work computer access, ended her health coverage early, and denied her access to her alumni email address. She says she has since been unable to find work in her field and has been working as a lifeguard.

To prevail on her federal claim, Reed must meet a demanding standard: The Eighth Circuit, as the complaint itself notes, requires that retaliation be motivated “solely” by protected activity. WashU will likely contest that, as well as whether the alleged conduct meets the legal threshold for constructive discharge, which occurs when an employer deliberately creates working conditions so objectively intolerable that a reasonable person would feel compelled to quit. Reed filed more than two years after her resignation, so timeliness may also be an issue.