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A transgender teenager's family is safe from Texas authorities for now, after a court ruled the state cannot investigate them for child abuse because they provided gender-affirming medical care to the teen.
On Wednesday, Travis County District Judge Amy Clark Meachum granted a temporary restraining order blocking state officials from targeting the teen's family. Meachum scheduled a March 11 hearing to decide on the legality of the state's actions.
The origins of the case began in spring 2021, when the state's Republican legislators failed to pass Senate Bill 1646, a bill that would have prosecuted any parent who provides puberty blockers or hormone therapy to their trans children for child abuse.
Then, last February, the state's Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a nonbinding opinion declaring gender-affirming health care for transgender youth as a form of child abuse.
The following week, Republican Governor Greg Abbott sent a letter to the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) directing them to investigate any parents who provide gender-affirming medical care to their trans children.
The DFPS then began investigating the family of a DFPS employee with a 16-year-old transgender daughter. The daughter received medical care for her dysphoria. Dysphoria is significant distress related to a person's strong desire to live as a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth.
The DFPS placed the employee on leave just hours after the investigation began, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a lawsuit filed on the family's behalf.
A DFPS Child Protective Services investigator then came to the family's home and asked the parents to hand over the teen's medical records. The parents refused.
The ACLU's lawsuit accused Abbott and Paxton of overstepping their legal authority in violation of state law and denying the family their constitutional rights.
"Defendants are also endangering the health and wellbeing of transgender youth by depriving them of medically necessary care. Defendants' actions are ultra vires, invalid and violate separation of powers and due process," the ACLU's lawsuit read.
The ACLU's suit also listed Dr. Megan Mooney as a plaintiff. Mooney is a licensed psychologist who is now required to report families who seek medical care for their trans children. As such "[Mooney] cannot comply with the governor's directive without harming her clients and violating her ethical obligations," the suit said.
The DFPS had received three reports of alleged child abuse related to trans-related health care before the lawsuit was filed.
A letter from the family presented publicly by the Texas Freedom Network, a state civil rights organization said, "[Governor] Abbott and Ken Paxton have said that standard best practices of pediatrics outlined by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association are child abuse. Our experience is the opposite. This standard of care is life-saving, essential medical care."
Alabama's Congress has recently passed a bill that would make it a felony to provide gender-affirming health care for any trans people up to the age of 19. Utah and Tennessee are also currently considering similar bills.
In a statement, President Joe Biden called Paxton and Abbott's actions a "cynical and dangerous" form of "government overreach at its worst" meant to "score political points."
"Transgender children bring fulfillment to their parents, joy to their friends, and are made in the image of God," Biden wrote. "Affirming a transgender child's identity is one of the best things a parent, teacher, or doctor can do to help keep children from harm, and parents who love and affirm their children should be applauded and supported, not threatened, investigated, or stigmatized."
Conservatives claim that medical care for transgender youth is dangerous, irreversible and can harm or "mutilate" children's bodies. However, while each trans child's care is individualized, sterilizations and mastectomies for trans youth are rare and mostly occur later in the transition process, Mary Romano M.D. told Vice News. Romano works at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which specializes in trans youth.
Conservatives misreport the low-risk methods actually used to treat trans youth, Romano said.
A young person must do more than simply state that they're the opposite sex in order for health care professionals to consider them transgender, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
Medical and mental health providers state that a young person's trans identity must be "insistent, persistent, and consistent." That is, a truly transgender child must repeatedly and continuously assert their trans identity over many years, not just a brief period, before professionals will render any kind of treatment.
Professionals will usually encourage young trans children to express their gender in ways that make them feel most comfortable. When a child reaches puberty, they can then receive "puberty blockers" which can temporarily prevent the irreversible physical changes that come with puberty.
These hormones, which have been given to children with other medical conditions for decades without any serious or irreversible side effects, Romano said, allow the child and their family more time to explore the child's gender identity.
Because of societal disapproval and harassment, trans youth are twice as likely as cisgender youth to experience depression and five times more likely to attempt suicide, according to the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey from The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization.
A 2010 study in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing showed that familial support and gender-affirming health care can reduce suicide attempts in trans youth by 50 percent.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram found that Paxton's opinion on trans youth medical care was riddled with "misleading citations."
Paxton's opinion cited the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, an anti-trans advocacy group. It also misrepresented findings from at least three researchers, the researchers said. Several researchers cited in Paxton's report told the publication that Paxton and Abbott's efforts harm the very kids that the Republicans allegedly want to protect.
Newsweek contacted Abbott's office for comment.
