A North Carolina appeals court is set to revisit a medical malpractice case brought by a detransitioner who alleges doctors guided her for years toward testosterone treatment and a double mastectomy. Although her lawsuit was previously thrown out for being filed too late, a newly enacted state law has reopened the door for her appeal. Oral arguments before the North Carolina Court of Appeals are scheduled for Sept. 29.
Prisha Mosley, now 28, says she was prescribed cross-sex hormones at age 17 and had both breasts removed the following year. She later filed claims against physicians and other health care providers, accusing them of fraud and medical malpractice and alleging they failed to properly inform her about the procedures, risks and long-term consequences of gender-transition treatment.
In an interview with News Media, Mosley said she now believes the medical interventions harmed rather than helped her. She said she came to feel that nothing had been wrong with her body and that the hormones and surgery did not bring the relief or well-being she had been seeking.
A trial court initially dismissed Mosley’s case under North Carolina’s statute of limitations for malpractice claims. Mosley told News Media that a 2025 North Carolina law changed the legal landscape by extending the filing deadline for certain medical malpractice lawsuits involving people who underwent gender-transition procedures.
Prisha Mosley, who transitioned to male and began taking testosterone as a minor, poses for a photograph in Michigan on Nov. 3, 2022. Mosley has since said she regrets the medical treatment. (REUTERS/Dieu-Nalio Chery)
“During the process through which my lawsuit was going through the courts, North Carolina passed HB 808, which was previously HB 805, which is something along the lines of the Protect Children and Women’s Act,” Mosley explained.
“[The law] extended the statute of limitations for anyone bringing forward a civil case, and even had a line which said that this includes cases that have already been brought forward or even pending in the courts now,” she continued.
Legislators in North Carolina passed the bill in 2025, overriding a veto from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein.
Though the bill was passed in July 2025, a North Carolina trial judge still dismissed Mosley’s lawsuit in August 2025, denying her lawyers’ motion to reinstate her medical malpractice claims during a special session and granting summary judgment to the plaintiffs.
“Despite this, my claims were dismissed with prejudice, even though they had been previously found to have merit for fraud. The malpractice was still in question due to the statute of limitations, and then after the passage of the law, the entire case was dismissed,” Mosley told News Media.
Mosley was initially encouraged by the judge’s decision to deny the defendants’ motion to dismiss, taking it as a signal her fraud accusations could have merit.
“The judge actually originally found that my case did have merit for fraud, and that was on the basis that I was told that I could actually change sex, which is not possible, and I was not only told that I could change sex, but that I needed to do so in order to survive and that doing so would ensure I had a good life. All of these claims are false,” she told News Media.
Detransitioner activist Prisha Mosley holding a sign outside the U.S. Supreme Court as oral arguments for US v Skrmetti are underway, Dec. 4, 2024. (Independent Women)
But after her lawsuit’s final dismissal in August, her lawyers appealed, leading to the upcoming Sept. 29 appellate court oral arguments.
Mosley is arguing that the doctors who counseled her into the double mastectomy and hormone therapy misled her by telling her she could become a man and go through male puberty, which she says was a lie.
“I consented to quote unquote top surgery, and I was under the impression that top surgery was the surgery that turned a female chest into a male chest, and that’s simply not what happened to me. In fact, I had complications related to my surgery,” she told News Media.
Prisha Mosley (fifth from the left) and other Independent Women ambassadors ready for the FTC hearing on gender transitioning. (Source: Independent Women)
“Clearly I didn’t have a male chest, and the guarantees weren’t promised that way. But it’s also impossible to induce puberty of the opposite sex because it’s impossible to change sex. I wasn’t going through male puberty. I was being put through menopause as a teenager, and while inducing all of these medical issues and problems for me, my doctors just covered it up with these fraudulent terms that made it seem like something good and medically sound was happening to me when it was not. Even when I complained about side effects and said that I was suffering from pain and acne and other issues, they told me that this was because of male puberty,” she explained.
Mosley said that she realized she had been lied to when, though she was still identifying as a male at the time, her fiancé’s young daughter kept referring to her as “mommy.”
“Despite the fact that I still had a beard at the time and I was wearing male clothes and all of that, this little girl started calling me mommy, and that’s just where everything fell into place for me,” she told News Media.
Mosley said she was encouraged by a recent ruling in New York, where 22-year-old detransitioner, Fox Varians, sued the psychologist and plastic surgeon who counseled her to undergo a gender transition, winning $2 million in a judgment.
Mosley pointed out that no detransitioners suing their medical providers for malpractice have ever lost their cases in trial.
“I think it’s clear to people that this type of medicalization is wrong, and it points to the fact, you know, Fox Varian’s is the only detransitioner case that’s ever made it to court. None of our cases, not mine, not anyone else’s, have ever failed in court. We’re being stopped by strange policies and statutes of limitations before we ever go before a jury. But the general public knows that what happened to us is wrong and that we deserve justice for what happened to us,” she told News Media.
News Media contacted Stein’s office and legal representatives for each of the defendants listed in Mosley vs. Emerson for further comment.