Federal prosecutors in Houston dropped their criminal case against Eithan Haim on Friday, less than two weeks before the Dallas surgeon was set to stand trial on charges of violating patient privacy laws by sharing information regarding transgender care at Texas Children’s Hospital with a conservative activist.

In court filings, prosecutors provided no explanation for their decision, and a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. District Judge David Hittner on Friday signed a joint motion to dismiss, clearing Haim of four counts of wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information. The counts were dismissed with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be refiled.

Prosecutors’ decision to drop the case came two days after Haim and his wife took to social media to criticize what they repeatedly argued was a politically motivated prosecution. 

Andrea Haim had also accused Jennifer Lowery, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, of violating a recent executive order from the Trump administration that instructs the attorney general to identify politically motivated actions by members of the Biden administration. The public comments by the husband-and-wife team came despite a warning from Hittner not to make statements that could interfere with the jury selection process.

Lowery assumed the role of acting U.S. Attorney less than a week ago following the resignation of Alamdar Hamdani. Although Hamdani had not been formally asked to resign, he did so preemptively, as it is customary for new presidents to install new U.S. Attorneys across all 93 districts. Lowery had been Hamdani’s first assistant.

“I think it speaks volumes about what the career staff thought about this case,” said Ryan Patrick, one of Haim’s lawyers. Patrick, the son of Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick, previously served as U.S. Attorney for Texas’ Southern District for three years before being asked to resign in 2021 following Joe Biden’s election.

From 2018 through 2023, Haim was a resident at Baylor College of Medicine and worked at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, the largest pediatric hospital in the country. At one point during the residency, Haim accessed the private information of patients outside his care and shared a portion of that information with the conservative activist Christopher Rufo.

Rufo published an article in May 2023 claiming that Texas Children’s Hospital had continued to administer puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors despite previously pledging to stop. 

(The hospital has previously said that it briefly stopped providing gender-affirming therapies after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the state’s child welfare agency to investigate reports of gender-affirming care for kids as abuse. It resumed providing such care after confirming it was in compliance with existing law, the hospital said in August).

Shortly after Rufo published the article, Texas passed a law banning transgender minors from getting puberty blockers and hormone therapies. While Haim admitted to sharing the patient information with Rufo, he maintained that he did not break the law because the documents were redacted.

Haim has described himself as a whistleblower who exposed what he saw as Texas Children’s Hospital misleading the public. His story gained significant traction in conservative circles, particularly after Texas Republicans like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. Reps Chip Roy and Dan Crenshaw publicly supported his cause.

In several posts and retweets on X (formerly known as Twitter) Haim and his wife celebrated the dismissal of the case. Andrea Haim, a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas, said they would do the same thing they did when federal agents visited their home in June 2023: drink champagne and relax on their balcony.

“Today is for celebrating, tomorrow is for accountability,” she wrote, sharing a photo of her husband and their young daughter.

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