A British Columbia family doctor has been ordered to pay $28,100 after the province’s Human Rights Tribunal ruled he discriminated against a transgender teenager by refusing to administer a prescribed puberty blocker.

Tribunal vice-chair Devyn Cousineau found Dr. Henry Ajaero violated Section 8 of the B.C. Human Rights Code when he declined to inject the 14-year-old patient with Lupron in March 2021.

Ajaero, a practising Anglican, told the teen’s mother he could not administer the drug for religious and cultural reasons. He also argued that using Lupron for gender-related treatment fell outside his experience and the scope of his practice.

The tribunal rejected both defences.

Cousineau accepted that Ajaero had never previously administered Lupron, had no experience providing transgender care and made the decision while operating a busy practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also found his refusal was not malicious or intended to harm the teenager.

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However, Cousineau ruled the doctor was qualified to give injections and had failed to establish that administering Lupron conflicted with his religious belief that “God created man and woman.”

“The Code is concerned with impacts and not intent,” Cousineau wrote.

The teenager, identified only as Child Q, had been prescribed Lupron by an endocrinologist at the B.C. Gender Clinic. After being turned away by Ajaero, the family obtained the injection at a walk-in clinic later that day.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C. had already formally reprimanded Ajaero for refusing the treatment without helping the patient obtain it elsewhere.

Following a four-day hearing, Cousineau ordered Ajaero to pay $20,000 for injury to the teenager’s “dignity, feelings and self-respect,” plus $8,100 to cover the cost of expert evidence. Cousineau rejected a request for $1,535 in lost wages claimed by the teen’s mother and declined to force Ajaero to display the decision publicly in his clinic. 

The adjudicator also rejected Ajaero’s request to keep his identity confidential, ruling there was a public interest in naming respondents found to have violated the Human Rights Code.