Philly-area medical providers ‘coerced’ a man to transition and operated without consent, lawsuit says

Two years after Drew Razny began cross-dressing privately, he traveled from his Wayne County home to seek counseling at the Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia.

Over the five years following that 2017 appointment, Razny, who is 40, according to public records, medically transitioned to life as a transgender woman. He took estrogen and underwent breast augmentation and genital surgery.

But in a lawsuit filed this month in Common Pleas Court, Razny alleges that he was “coerced” to transition by the Mazzoni Center, the now-shuttered Delaware County Memorial Hospital, and a Main Line surgeon.

“Had Mr. Razny been fully informed, he would not have agreed to the treatment,” the suit says.

The lawsuit says Razny felt immediate regret after his genital surgery, which took place in 2023, even though he says he rescinded his consent to proceed with the operation. Shortly after, he began detransitioning back to life as a man.

Mazzoni’s CEO, Simon Trowell, said in a statement that the center is confident in the high standard of care it provides patients.

“The work of Mazzoni Center is centered on core values that include patient focus, respect for people, and integrity,” Trowell said. “In alignment with these values, we take any concern related to patient care extremely seriously.”

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The majority of adults who transition find that the experience improved their well-being, but a small percentage take steps to stop or reverse the process, research suggests. The reasons for detransitioning are diverse and include lack of support, discrimination, or difficulty obtaining care to continue the process.

But Razny, who currently lives in Tennessee, says in the complaint that he detransitioned because he wasn’t properly evaluated or informed and hadn’t provided consent in the first place.

As transgender healthcare has become a focus of the U.S. culture war, lawsuits like Razny’s have emerged against providers across the country over the last couple of years.

In announcing the lawsuit, Keller Postman, the D.C.-based firm representing Razny, said the case was an example of how “trusted medical institutions can morph into overzealous transition mills.”

Razny’s attorneys are John James Snidow and John M. Masslon, who is listed as a contributor for the conservative Federalist Society.

“We’re very much interested in bringing those kinds of claims against providers like this,” Snidow said.

Some researchers and trans-rights advocates view the lawsuits as another effort by the political right in a campaign against gender-affirming care.

“The stories are real,” Kinnon MacKinnon, a Canadian researcher leading the world’s largest study on people who stopped or reversed their transition, told the New York Times in 2024. “But at the same time, they’re being positioned with a very clear political strategy.”

The complaint says that Razny did not feel like a woman when he sought care at Mazzoni Center to better understand his proclivity for cross-dressing as a “sexual expression,” the lawsuit says.

In August 2017, the complaint says, Razny saw a nurse practitioner at Mazzoni who diagnosed him with gender dysphoria without conducting a comprehensive medical or psychiatric evaluation.

A few months later, a Mazzoni provider prescribed him estrogen and testosterone blockers to “help align his mind and his body,” the suit says.

Razny’s life changed quickly once he began to take hormones. He came to identify as a woman and began being attracted to men, according to the suit. He came out as trans to his employer and coworkers, and soon after lost his job. The complaint does not provide information about the employment situation or what caused its end.

Mazzoni providers first raised the option of genital surgery to Razny in 2018, the suit says, but he refused. In 2022, he underwent breast augmentation, which was performed by plastic surgeon Kathy Rumer, according to Snidow.

Rumer has a private cosmetics practice in Ardmore. The surgeon said that she used to operate at Delaware County Memorial Hospital and has no affiliation with Mazzoni, but declined to comment on the lawsuit. Spokespeople for the hospital did not respond to requests for comment.

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Rumer “repeatedly attempted to persuade” Razny to undergo genital surgery, the suit says.

In February 2023, Snidow said, Razny was scheduled for genital surgery. He was required to pause his hormones two weeks before the surgery, and in that time he started having doubts about the operation, according to the complaint.

The most explosive allegation in the lawsuit is Razny’s claim that on the day of the surgery he “explicitly stated that he did not wish to proceed with the procedure.” The complaint says that he asked to speak to his wife but that providers denied his request, citing COVID-19 protocols.

“Despite his express objections and requests to speak with his wife, Mr. Razny was subsequently sedated and subjected to the genital surgery against his stated wishes,” the complaint said.

Razny regretted the procedure immediately after, the suit says, and Rumer attempted to reassure him during a follow-up by saying she would be able to reverse the surgery.

When he reached out to Mazzoni to share his decision to reverse his transition, staff allegedly told Razny that by proceeding he would be going against the clinic, the complaint says. He began his detransition on his own.

The lawsuit comes at a difficult time for gender-affirming care providers and their patients in Philadelphia, and as Mazzoni was set to turn a page after financially difficult years with a new chief executive.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors and President Donald Trump‘s administration has begun a crackdown on hospitals that have provided such services.

» READ MORE: Penn ceases gender-affirming surgery for patients under age 19

Penn Medicine is among health systems that will no longer provide gender-affirming care for patients 19 and under, and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has been fighting a Department of Justice subpoena demanding information on patients who received puberty blockers and hormones.

And Mazzoni has been entangled over the past year in lawsuits over high-interest loans that the center claims a rogue ex-chief financial executive took out without approval. The center refused to pay the loan back on its original terms and faced business liens that led to frozen funds and layoffs. Mazzoni settled the cases in May.