In a significant but quietly closed chapter of a high-profile media defamation case, NBC News has reached a settlement with Dr. Mahendra Amin, a Georgia-based obstetrician-gynecologist, who sued the network for $30 million over allegations he performed unauthorized medical procedures on immigrant women in federal custody.
The dispute, rooted in a 2020 MSNBC report, threatened to become a defining trial on the limits of investigative journalism and the power of a single narrative in shaping national outrage.
The legal battle centered on MSNBC’s coverage of a whistleblower complaint that alleged Dr. Amin performed multiple unnecessary hysterectomies on female detainees at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Ocilla, Georgia.
The broadcast ignited a firestorm. Headlines across the nation exploded with terms like “mass hysterectomies,” and social media lit up with visceral reactions, fueled in part by the network’s description of Amin being referred to as “the uterus collector” by detainees.
But behind the media frenzy, the evidence told a more restrained story.
Court records made it clear that only two hysterectomy procedures were performed by Dr. Amin—both with ICE authorization and informed consent documents signed by the patients themselves.
The whistleblower complaint, which MSNBC leaned on heavily, never alleged more than those two procedures, and the government never charged Amin with wrongdoing. Still, NBC News ran with language that strongly suggested a pattern of abuse, triggering public outrage and professional devastation for the doctor.
U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood, presiding over the case in Waycross, Georgia, allowed the suit to proceed, noting that a jury could find NBC’s reporting materially false. “A jury could conclude that [Amin] performed unnecessary and unauthorized gynecological procedures,” she wrote. “A jury could also conclude that these accusations were materially false.”
The case was scheduled for trial on April 22, but in February, both parties informed the court of a settlement in progress. Dr. Amin officially dismissed the lawsuit on April 4. Terms of the settlement remain sealed and neither NBC News nor MSNBC have commented publicly on the resolution.