AUSTIN, TEXAS – A new Texas Supreme Court ruling allows, but could discourage, Texas from launching new “child abuse” investigations against parents who provide teens with gender-affirming health care.
Texas officials are now free to resume investigations, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday. But the order could also dissuade Texas from doing so because the court decided to suspend the specific investigation at issue in the case.
Lawyers specializing in LGBTQ rights hope that means the state agency will refuse to resume or initiate abuse investigations while the legality of the policy is under judicial review.
Lambda Legal, which helped file the lawsuit against Texas on behalf of the parents of a 16-year-old girl, called the decision a victory because it put the state’s investigation into her family on hold. While the ruling doesn’t stop Texas from launching investigations into other families, it would be foolish for the state to do so now because those families could also seek a warrant, said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney and health care strategist at Lambda Legal.
“We hope that with a clear determination from the Texas Supreme Court that this directive is not legally binding, things will return to normal before this directive from Governor Abbott came out,” said Currey Cook, Lambda’s senior counsel. Legal.
“Are they going to do that? We don’t know. We hope so,” he said.
The ruling, which blocked a state injunction issued by an Austin judge in March, allowed the injunction against the investigations to remain in effect only for the family that filed the lawsuit.
Lower courts do not have the authority to provide relief from investigations to families who were not parties to the lawsuit, the court said.
Friday’s ruling was limited to enforcing the court order. The merits of the case, whether state-mandated “child abuse” investigations into transgender care violate families’ rights, remain before the Austin-based Third Court of Appeals.
Stephen Sheppard, former dean of St. Mary’s School of Law in San Antonio, said the court’s ruling clearly shows that the justices oppose enforcement of the February directive by Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton.
“Each member of the Texas Supreme Court has shown very intense procedural scrutiny sought by the Texas Attorney General,” Sheppard said. “None of them seem happy with the Texas Attorney General for a variety of reasons, and those reasons have generated differing opinions.”
The ruling also shows that the state high court seeks to protect transgender children and their parents from health care investigations, Sheppard said.
“Although that protection is not permanent at this time, it is because it is too early to grant final relief,” Sheppard added. “There hasn’t been a trial yet. But this is an indication of what all three levels of the Texas courts believe (will be) the outcome after trial.”
Since Abbott ordered the state child welfare agency to begin investigating parents of transgender children for “child abuse,” experts have repeatedly argued that the directive carries no legal weight. Additionally, bills prohibiting gender-affirming care for transgender youth have not been signed into law in the Texas legislature.
On Friday, LGBTQ advocates again said that Texas law remains unchanged and that child protective services have no legal obligation to investigate.
“Although the court limited its order to the Doe family…it reaffirmed that Texas law has not changed and that no mandated reporter or DFPS employee is required to take any action based on the governor’s direction and the prosecutor’s opinion.” general,” the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal said in a statement.
In a partial dissent, three justices said they would have blocked all aspects of the court order, arguing that the right time for a legal challenge would be when abuse investigators tried to remove a child or take other action based on an investigation.
State officials said nine such investigations were underway when State District Judge Amy Clark Meachum issued the injunction, ruling that Gov. Greg Abbott exceeded his authority when he issued a directive in February that told the child welfare agency of the state to investigate the treatment of gender affirmation as abuse.
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The legal challenge was launched by parents, identified only as Jane and John Doe in court documents, who were under investigation for providing gender-affirming care to their 16-year-old son. Her mother worked for the Department of Family and Protective Services, which placed her on leave and launched a child abuse investigation after she asked a supervisor to clarify what Abbott’s order meant for her family.
After a one-day hearing in March, during which Jane Doe testified about the strain and stigma caused by investigating child abuse, Meachum issued a temporary injunction that blocked investigations based solely on health care for transgender youth. Such state action violated the families’ constitutional rights, the judge ruled.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton immediately appealed, an act that halted the injunction’s execution under the state’s rules of court procedure.
The Austin-based Third Court of Appeals eventually reinstated the injunction, blocking abuse investigations until it could rule on the legality of Abbott’s directive and the Department of Family and Protective Services’ implementation of it.
Paxton then asked the state Supreme Court to block the injunction.
Contributing: The Associated Press