Texas Update #3

As the legal battle heats up down in Texas, I will post updates of the court battles.

The Executive Order is being heard before a judge but the Texas Attorney General made some interesting comments.

Does the state think transgender care is abuse? Ken Paxton’s comments contradict Texas’ legal stance
Conflicting statements between the attorney general and his deputies representing the state are raising questions about what exactly Texas’ new directives targeting gender-affirming care for trans youth means in practice.
Texas Morning News
By Lauren McGaughy
March 10, 2022


Fighting to keep his job in a heated GOP primary this year, Attorney General Ken Paxton repeatedly insisted that certain medical treatments for transgender youth abusive and illegal.

But in the relative calm of a court hearing, the state’s lawyers have said something quite different: Gender-affirming care for minors is not abuse in all cases, and the state won’t go after parents just because their trans child is receiving these treatments.

“Despite the frankly breathless media coverage of these important issues, there has been no call to investigate all trans youth or all youth undergoing these gender affirming procedures or therapies. That’s not the case,” Assistant Attorney General Ryan Kercher said in court last week in the first legal test for the state’s policy of investigating certain care for trans minors as abuse.

The conflicting statements are causing confusion among state workers, sowing fear among parents and kids — and raising questions about what the state’s new directive targeting gender-affirming treatments for trans youth means in practice.

[…]

On Friday, a district court judge in Travis County will hold a hearing in the lawsuit filed by the parent of the transgender teenager. Last week, the judge granted the parent’s request that the state’s investigation into her child’s care be temporarily halted.

She could also decide to extend the stay statewide and halt all investigations into care for trans kids. Paxton said Thursday he will appeal to fight the stay at the Texas Supreme Court.

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Apple, Google, Ikea and others urge Texas to drop transgender policy

Axios

By Stephen Totilo & Ina Fried

March 10, 2022

More than 60 companies, including some of the largest firms in tech and finance, are calling on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to abandon an executive order that equates gender-affirming healthcare for transgender children with child abuse.

Driving the news: Apple, Google, Meta, Johnson & Johnson, Ikea, PayPal, Capital One, Electronic Arts and many more firms signed an ad running in the Friday edition of the Dallas Morning News calling the new order discriminatory.

• "The recent attempt to criminalize a parent for helping their transgender child access medically necessary, age-appropriate healthcare in the state of Texas goes against the values of our companies," the ad states, according to a copy of it seen by Axios.
• "We call on public leaders — in Texas and across the country — to abandon efforts to write discrimination into law and policy."

"It's not just wrong, it has an impact on our employees, our customers, their families, and our work."

If they are so against what is going on in those states... let their feet do the waking out of those states and stop giving campaign donations to politicians who support those bills. Otherwise they are just flapping their jaws. 

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How Medical Care for Transgender Youth Became ‘Child Abuse’ in Texas

A custody battle in the Dallas suburbs amplified a growing conservative cause and helped fuel a move to treat transgender medicine as abuse.

New York Times

By J. David Goodman

March 11, 2022

Jeffery Younger fought for years with his ex-wife, a pediatrician, over the gender identity of one of their twins. While she followed the advice of their children’s doctor to affirm the child’s desire to dress as a girl, grow long hair and be known as Luna, Mr. Younger steadfastly objected.

He resisted the new name, insisting instead on boys’ clothes, short haircuts and the name the couple had chosen at birth.

What began in a single household in a small community outside Dallas became a very public custody battle between Mr. Younger and Dr. Anne Georgulas, transforming him into a folk hero among conservatives and amplifying a growing effort to roll back transgender protections in statehouses across America.

It paved the way, too, for an order late last month by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children.

The impetus for these laws are coming from conservative and right-wing Christian organizations that we have seen before…

Those at the center of the conservative push for new state laws include a coalition of familiar groups — the Heritage Foundation, Family Policy Alliance and Alliance Defending Freedom — that came together in the last two years.

Then last month, a newer player on the right, American Principles Project, took up the cause in Texas, spending more than $600,000 to run a series of highly produced ads on cable television featuring the case of Mr. Younger, who has become an outspoken supporter of restrictive legislation on transgender issues. The ads directly targeted Mr. Abbott during a hard-fought Republican primary, accusing the governor of not taking steps to “protect our children.”

[…]

In 2019, the Heritage Foundation, along with the Family Policy Alliance, hosted discussions in Washington on transgender athletes and transgender children, including a panel on the “medical harms” of hormonal and surgical interventions. The groups formed a coalition, known as Promise to America’s Children, and pressed for new laws.

And the Executive Order is have the desired chilling effect on trans parents and children.

But for many families in Texas, the threat of an investigation by the state has introduced new fears into an already challenging set of medical decisions. Children now worry that classmates or teachers could report their parents for possible abuse. Some families have taken steps to leave the state.