Texas’s transphobic “Governor” Greg Abbott (R) and his toady “Attorney General” Ken Paxton (R), facing pressure from right-wing media outlets and far-right politicians as they face primaries in today’s primary election in the Lone Star State, issued a nonbinding directive last week that the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services launch bogus “child abuse” investigations into parents of trans children who provide them gender-affirming health care.
Now, the ACLU of Texas is suing Abbott and Paxton for harming the lives of trans Texas kids based on the transphobic lie that raising trans kids is “child abuse.”
A parent of a trans child who works for the Texas DFPS was one of the first to be investigated by the agency in the Abbott/Paxton transphobic witchhunt of trans kids and their parents, per a report from the New York Times today.
J. David Goodman at The New York Times:
HOUSTON — Texas officials have begun investigating parents of transgender adolescents for possible child abuse, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, after Gov. Greg Abbott directed them last week to handle certain medical treatments as possible crimes.
The investigations by the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services, which have not been previously reported, were launched in response to an order from Mr. Abbott to the agency, the lawsuit says. The order followed a nonbinding opinion by the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, that parents who provide their transgender teenagers with puberty-suppressing drugs or other medically accepted treatments — which doctors describe as gender-affirming care — could be investigated for child abuse.
Among the first to be investigated was an employee of the state protective services agency who has a 16-year-old transgender child. On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and Lambda Legal went to state court in Austin to try to stop the inquiry.
The employee, who was not named in the court filing, works on the review of reports of abuse and neglect. She was placed on administrative leave last week, according to the filing, and on Friday was visited by an investigator from the agency, which is also seeking medical records related to her child. The family of the child, identified in court documents only as Mary Doe, has refused to voluntarily turn over the records.
“We are terrified for Mary’s health and well-being, and for our family,” wrote the employee in a declaration filed with the suit, in which she and her husband are identified as Jane and John Doe. “I feel betrayed by my state and the agency for whom I work.”
On Tuesday (1 March), the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Republican incumbent after he ordered the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to crack down on trans youth receiving gender-affirming treatment.
Abbott, bolstered by a non-binding judgement by attorney general Ken Paxton, ordered the agency last week to “conduct prompt and thorough investigations of any reported instances of Texas children being subjected to abusive gender-transitioning procedures”.
Puberty blockers, the safe and well-studied drug that researchers say are “life-saving“, were dubbed “monstrous” by Paxton and described as “abusive” by Abbott.
The conservative demonization of trans people in America has been steadily increasing in pace and tenor over the last half-decade. During the last year in particular, conservatives have shifted their focus to trans minors, further alienating a group already primed for feelings of isolation and exclusion.
The party of “family values” now wants to see otherwise loving families destroyed in a warped attempt to “save” them.
Now, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have decided that providing these children with medical care constitutes “child abuse.” As a result, teachers, doctors and other adults to whom trans teens turn for support will have to worry about potential legal troubles for not reporting those kids and their parents to protective services. It’s a horrifying escalation that will not improve the lives of these children — but it will likely politically benefit the Republicans craven enough to build their electoral futures on a foundation of bigotry and intolerance towards some of the nation's most vulnerable children.
[...]The attorney general’s opinion is likely to be challenged in court, but it could become entrenched if such a lawsuit is heard by a likeminded judge who is equally willing to disregard the needs of trans youths. There is the chance, though, that a federal judge could block this attempt to deny trans children medical care, as a federal judge in Arkansas did after lawmakers there banned gender-affirming care for minors.
But until that happens, if it happens at all, there are likely teachers and nurses and doctors who agree with Abbott and Paxton and will gladly use the governor’s order as an excuse to turn the power of the state against children they dislike. As long as this is the state of play in Texas, parents of trans children will wake up every day wondering if it’s the day that investigators turn up at their door. Worse still will be their child’s fear that this is the day that both their hormone replacement therapy and their family will be stripped from them.