Courts: Texas minors' gender-affirming care ban OK to start Friday; drag show ban paused
The Texas Supreme Court on Thursday denied an emergency motion by five Texas families seeking to delay a controversial ban on gender-affirming care for minors, paving the way for the new law to take effect Friday.
Passing through the Republican-led state Legislature earlier this year, Senate Bill 14 will prohibit doctors in Texas from providing certain gender-affirming medical treatments — including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and certain surgeries — to minors experiencing gender dysphoria, a condition in which a person’s gender identity doesn’t match their sex at birth.
"The direct appeal in this case remains pending before the Court," a Supreme Court's statement said without further elaboration.
The motion the court rejected Thursday was a last-ditch effort to allow those gender-affirming treatments to remain available to minors as the court continues deliberating the case.
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Citing a previous Travis County state District Court ruling that would have temporarily paused the new law's implementation, rights advocates in a joint statement called the ban cruel and unconstitutional.
"Today’s cruel ruling places Texas’ transgender youth, and the families and medical professionals who love and care for them, directly in harm’s way," attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union and Transgender Law Center said on behalf of the families challenging the law.
Last week, state District Judge Maria Cantú Hexsel granted the plaintiffs' temporary injunction, citing concerns that its provisions infringe upon parents' rights to seek care for their children, interfere with physicians' rights to occupational freedom and discriminate against transgender adolescents.
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"It is clear to the Court that, unless Defendants are immediately enjoined from enforcing the Act, Plaintiffs will suffer probable, imminent, and irreparable injury in the interim," Cantú Hexsel wrote in her Aug. 25 decision.
The Office of the Attorney General, led by Angela Colmenero in place of suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, immediately appealed the injunction to the state Supreme Court, allowing for a stay of the lower court's ruling.
"These unproven medical interventions are emphatically pushed by some activists in the medical and psychiatric professions despite the lack of evidence demonstrating medical benefit, and even while growing evidence indicates harmful effects on children’s mental and physical welfare," the attorney general's office said in statement upon its appeal to the state's high court. "The OAG will continue to enforce the laws duly enacted by the Texas Legislature and uphold the values of the people of Texas by doing everything in its power to protect children from damaging 'gender transition' interventions."
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The lawsuit challenging SB 14 was filed in July by attorneys from several rights groups — including Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, Transgender Law Center and the law firms Scott Douglass & McConnico LLP and Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP — working on behalf of the families seeking to stop the new law.
"The district court heard two days of testimony, weighed the evidence, and made a reasoned and thoughtful determination that the ban likely violated the Texas Constitution, and thus should be delayed while the full case plays out in court," the rights advocates wrote in a statement Thursday. "Inexplicably, the Texas Supreme Court disagreed, and transgender Texas youth and their families are forced to confront the start of the school year fearful of what awaits them.
"But let us be clear: the fight is far from over."
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Federal court pauses Texas drag show ban
In a separate case challenging another Texas law, a federal court on Thursday stopped SB 12 — a new state law to regulate "sexually oriented performances," restricting those performances from taking place on commercial or public property or in the presence of minors — from taking effect Friday.
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In a lawsuit filed earlier this month by the ACLU of Texas in a U.S. District Court in Houston, opponents of SB 12 called the new law vague and said it violates both the First and Fourteenth Amendments, creating a prior restraint on free expression and an avenue for prosecutors to censor constitutionally protected activities. Critics have said the law is meant to restrict drag shows, though the legislation doesn't specifically mention those performances.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate, in an April statement said: “I selected SB 12 to be a top priority of mine because someone must fight back against the radical Left’s degradation of our society and values. I will not allow Texas children to be sexualized and scarred for life by harmful drag performances.”
U.S. District Judge David Hittner in a Thursday order in part agreed with the plaintiffs and issued a temporary two-week restraining order to halt the law's implementation.
"Based on the evidence and testimony presented at the Hearing, the Court finds there is a substantial likelihood that S.B. 12 as drafted violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution under one or more of the legal theories put forward by the Plaintiffs," Hittner wrote.
“The goal of this law is to chip away at our freedoms and eventually erase queer and trans existence from the public sphere,” said Andrea Segovia, senior field and policy adviser with Transgender Education Network of Texas, along with other advocates and plaintiffs in a joint statement after the ruling.
“Our community and our art will not be silenced or erased," the statement said. "Our community has fought too long to exist to let a drag ban stop us from challenging gender norms, celebrating our identities, and preserving queer culture."
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Court: Texas minors' gender-affirming care ban OK to take effect
