The Volokh Conspiracy
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Libel Lawsuit over Critical Race Theory Book That Accused Doctor of "Mass Hysterectomies"
Last year, Dr. Mahendra Amin prevailed in part in his lawsuit against NBC over certain accusations; from the June 26, 2024 decision in that case:
NBC published multiple reports about allegations that Plaintiff, Dr. Mahendra Amin, performed mass hysterectomies on female detainees at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement … facility …. NBC reported allegations that Dr. Amin performed hysterectomies that were unnecessary, unauthorized, or even botched. {Viewed in their entirety, the September 15, 2020 episodes of Deadline: White House, All In With Chris Hayes, and The Rachel Maddow Show accuse Plaintiff of performing mass hysterectomies on detainee women.} …
Multiple statements [made in the NBC coverage] are verifiably false. The undisputed evidence has established that: (1) there were no mass hysterectomies or high numbers of hysterectomies at the facility; (2) Dr. Amin performed only two hysterectomies on female detainees from the ICDC ….
Amin is also suing others who had made similar statements, and Tuesday he sued Sage Publications, an academic publisher. From the Complaint:
This Complaint arises from Defendant's December 4, 2024, publication of a book titled Slippery Eugenics: An Introduction to the Critical Studies of Race, Gender and Coloniality [by R. Sanchez-Rivera], and which includes a section containing multiple false and defamatory statements of and concerning a private figure, Dr. Mahendra Amin, M.D., which accuse him of performing fifty-seven (57) hysterectomies that were not medically necessary and were conducted without consent on immigrant women [detainees] ….
The book contends that "five gynecologists" reached that conclusion as well as the conclusion that Dr. Amin "exaggerated" his patients' conditions "to justify" the purported fifty-seven hysterectomies. No gynecologist reached a conclusion that Dr. Amin sterilized fifty-seven women at ICDC…. Dr. Amin conducted only two hysterectomies, both of which were necessary and done with the patient's knowledge and consent, as were all of the procedures Dr. Amin performed on ICDC patients.
The defamatory statements above had already been proven false by the time Sage published the book. For instance, Prism (one of the first outlets to name Dr. Amin) published reasons to doubt the veracity of Wooten's claims on September 17, 2020. Further, the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had definitively stated that only two hysterectomies had been performed by Dr. Amin on ICDC patients and that ICE had approved both as medically necessary.
Even more damning, on June 26, 2024—nearly six months before the book was released to the public—Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, in the case styled Amin v. NBCUniversal Media, LLC, Case No. 5:21-cv-56, issued an opinion granting summary judgment to Dr. Amin on several key claims. Judge Wood concluded, as a matter of law, that "[t]he undisputed evidence has established that: (1) there were no mass hysterectomies or high numbers of hysterectomies at the facility; [and] (2) Dr. Amin performed only two hysterectomies on female detainees from the ICDC." …
Defendant negligently and maliciously published the statements, which have been discredited….
On March 21, 2025, Dr. Amin sent via email and Federal Express a letter to Sage informing it of the falsity of the book's statements about Dr. Amin, which it should have already known, and demanding that Sage and Dr. Sanchez-Rivera retract the statements and cease and desist publication. Defendant did take steps to cease distribution of the defamatory book and issued a corrected second edition. But Defendant did not take any steps to remedy the harm already caused to Dr. Amin by the publishing, sales, and circulation of the book's initial version.
Note that Amin appears not to be suing the author of the book, perhaps because the author is a professor at Cambridge in England, which may raise complicated cases of personal jurisdiction. (Sage, the publisher, does business in the U.S. from an L.A. suburb, and the lawsuit was therefore filed in federal court in the Central District of California.)
