Arizona Republicans are trying to remove the testimony of an advocate for transgender youth against the state’s Save Women’s Sports Act over allegations of plagiarism.
“The ultimate gaslight is to say that a boy is a girl,” Arizona’s state senate president, Sen. Warren Petersen, told Fox News Digital in a statement. “Now, we have learned that the expert witness did more than gaslight. We have presented the court with multiple examples of identical or virtually identical phrasing used by other academics without any attribution.”
Petersen is the lead defendant in a case challenging the Save Women’s Sports Act in Arizona, which is awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court over whether it will hear an appeal of an early order.
Petersen says that Dr. Daniel Shumer, a clinical associate professor of pediatrics and medical director of the Gender Services Program and fellowship director of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of Michigan, plagiarized his expert witness testimony at least 22 times in his testimony opposing Arizona’s Save Women’s Sports Act.
US JUDGE HALTS ARIZONA FROM BANNING TRANSGENDER GIRLS IN FEMALE SCHOOL SPORTS TEAMS
“Over the past two years, I have led the charge to defend Arizona’s commonsense law that protects women in sports,” Petersen told Fox News Digital. “Despite the many attacks from the left, I’ve been grateful for this opportunity to champion the integrity of women’s sports – especially in the absence of our state’s attorney general. I will continue to lead the fight for this law in the courts, and I am hopeful that the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually allow our state to protect women’s sports!”
On Wednesday, Petersen filed a request, legally called a Daubert motion, to remove Shumer as the opposing expert witness.
The motion reads, “Dr. Shumer’s opinions are not reliable because he plagiarized them, he lacks the qualifications to offer them, and he has presented no objective proof that his opinions represent good science.”
The document alleges that Shumer took wording from Stephen Rosenthal, a witness in the case challenging Alabama’s law prohibiting surgeries and hormone therapy for minors, and from Joshua Safer, a witness in the case challenging West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act, and did not give proper attribution.
One example highlighted by Petersen is that in a report issued on Oct. 10, 2024, Shumer copied wording nearly verbatim from Rosenthal’s report filed on April 21, 2022.
Rosenthal’s wording reads, “Any attempts to ‘cure’ transgender individuals by forcing their gender identity into alignment with their assigned sex are harmful, dangerous, and ineffective. Those practices have been denounced as unethical by all major professional associations of medical and mental health professionals, such as WPATH, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Psychological Association.”
Shumer’s wording reads, “Attempts to ‘cure’ transgender individuals by forcing their gender identity into alignment with their birth sex are harmful and ineffective. Those practices have been widely denounced as unethical by all major professional associations of medical and mental health professionals, such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Psychological Association, among others.”
The University of Michigan’s guide defines plagiarism as “the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.”
In a Feb. 18, 2025, deposition, Shumer appeared to admit to plagiarism.
“I don’t believe that an expert report necessarily constitutes research and [] this U of M Standard Practice Guideline may or may not be applicable to an expert report. Also, as an expert in this case, I’m not performing duties related to my role in the University of Michigan,” Shumer said. “All that being said, I think that it’s clear that some of the words I used were used from other sources without appropriate credit and that that meets this definition.”
When asked during the deposition, “Why do you think now you should have cited the reports in your expert report?”
Shumer responded, “Because I believe that that’s the right thing to do when — when there’s material that — that was initially written by someone else that you’re using to make a similar point.”
In the deposition, he said among the services provided at the Child and Adolescent Gender Services Clinic at Mott Children’s Hospital, which he is the clinical director of, are “medical interventions, such as GnRH agonists or 19 gender-affirming hormones.”
Shumer is also an expert witness in cases against President Donald Trump’s executive order “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”
He has been featured in various social media posts from Stand with Trans, an organization “founded to create a safe and supportive space for transgender youth and their loved ones,” plugging various sessions both on Facebook and Instagram he was giving as part of Trans Empowerment Month celebrated each October.
In a Sept. 12, 2024 Instagram post, Stand with Trans called Shumer, “a leading pediatric endocrinologist,” and said that he would “debunk common myths and walk through the referral process for pediatric gender clinics, offering invaluable information for both youth and parents.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Shumer and the University of Michigan for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.
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