Five Texas Families Sue State Over Ban on Health Care for Trans Youth
ACLU says C U in court
By Dex Wesley Parra, Fri., July 21, 2023
With weeks to go before Texas' ban on gender affirming medical care for minors goes into effect, five families with transgender children, along with three medical providers, are suing to block Senate Bill 14 as unconstitutional before it can upend the lives of thousands of Texas families. "The cruelty is the point here," said Emmett Schelling, executive director of the Transgender Education Network of Texas. "The cruelty is what's driving this legislation."
By the end of the 88th regular session of the Texas Legislature, after months of rallies and die-ins from queer activists, it became clear that the Republican majority wouldn't budge on denying transgender youth access to certain lifesaving medical care. In early June, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law SB 14, prohibiting Texas health care professionals from treating gender dysphoria, including through hormone therapy and puberty blockers. The families represented by the American Civil Liberties Union are suing the state, plus (now-suspended) Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Health & Human Services Commission, and the Texas Medical Board. They argue that the law violates their parental rights to provide best practice medical care for their children. They also hold that the legislation is discriminatory on the grounds that the same treatment can be administered to other minors for any reason other than gender dysphoria, a medical diagnosis that identifies the conflict people experience when their outward appearance of gender does not align with their internalized state.
Similar challenges to anti-trans laws across the country might offer some respite for these plaintiffs. In June, a federal judge in Florida delivered a massive blow to politicians who would rather not admit that, as he wrote, gender identity is real. "This kind of care is only banned when it's provided to transgender adolescents with gender dysphoria and for no other purpose," Harper Seldin, an ACLU staff attorney, said in a press teleconference. "I think courts correctly see that that is a form of sex discrimination."
The three doctors who signed on to the lawsuit, all based in Houston, argue this harms every Texan, because when doctors must choose between disregarding evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and risking revocation of licenses, they will opt instead to leave the state altogether.
Glimpses of that reality have already taken shape. As the Chronicle reported in May, the Adolescent Medicine clinic at Austin's Dell Children's Medical Hospital lost its doctors after Paxton announced an investigation into "potentially illegal" practices concerning transgender youth. Texas Children's Hospital, based in Houston, recently moved to discontinue hormone therapy for trans minors.
For children and adolescents already prescribed a course of treatment for gender dysphoria, the law requires weaning off the hormone treatment. Authors of the bill ignore the advice of leading medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, which maintain that gender affirming care is best practice for patients with gender dysphoria.
"The number of parents I've spoken to who have said to me, 'I got my child back,' when that child started receiving gender affirming care – I can't even tell you how many," said Lynly Egyes, legal director for Transgender Law Center, which jointly filed the lawsuit. "Having a parent say, 'My child is now happy participating in school, getting straight As again,' it's huge. And the fear of that going away because they're not receiving the medically necessary care that they need to receive is terrifying."
* Editor's note Monday, July 24, 4:25pm: This story has been updated to correct that the Adolescent Medicine clinic at Austin's Dell Children's Medical Hospital has not closed; it lost its doctors. The Chronicle regrets the error.
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