Texas Blocked From Investigating Transgender Kids' Parents For Child Abuse
A Texas judge ruled Friday to bar the state from investigating gender-affirming care for transgender youth as abuse.
... District Judge Amy Clark Meachum issued a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive to compel the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate.
The injunction broadens Meachum’s earlier order blocking the state’s investigation of the parents of one transgender teenager. The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal sued on behalf of the parents of the 16-year-old girl over the investigation and Abbott’s directive. Meachum scheduled a trial for July 11 on the challenge to Abbott’s directive....
Meachum’s ruling came the same day that dozens of major companies — including Apple, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Meta and Microsoft — criticized the Texas directive in a full-page ad in the Dallas Morning News.
“The recent attempt to criminalize a parent for helping their transgender child access medically necessary, age-appropriate healthcare in the state of Texas goes against the values of our companies,” read the ad, which used the headline “DISCRIMINATION IS BAD FOR BUSINESS.”
... The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal sued on behalf of the parents.
Megan Mooney, a clinical psychologist also represented by the groups in the lawsuit, said the governor’s directive has caused “outright panic” among mental health professionals and families of transgender youth.
“Parents are terrified that (child protective services) is going to come and question their children, or take them away,” Mooney testified. “Mental health professionals are scared that we’re either violating our standards and professional codes of conduct, or in violation of the law.”
The governor’s directive and Paxton’s opinion go against the nation’s largest medical groups, including the American Medical Association, which have opposed Republican-backed restrictions on transgender people filed in statehouses nationwide.