The Texas Supreme Court issued an order on Thursday denying an emergency request to block a law that bans transgender procedures for children, allowing the ban to take effect.
Legal Battle
The law, called SB 14 (pdf) prohibits doctors from performing certain gender transition procedures—including castration, mastectomy, puberty blockers, and hormone therapy—for children. It also restricts the use of public funds for transgender procedures.The groups claimed the ban violates the right to parental autonomy guaranteed by the Due Course of Law Clause of the Texas Constitution, discriminates against parents in the exercise of their right to make medical decisions for their children, and infringes on Texas physicians’ right of occupational freedom.
Judges wrote in the injunction that the transgender procedure ban likely violates Article I, Section 19 of the Texas Constitution “by infringing upon the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.”
‘Mutilative’ Gender Transition Procedures
Texas state authorities immediately appealed the injunction by filing a notice of accelerated interlocutory appeal (pdf), with the Texas Attorney General’s office arguing that SB 14 prevented harmful procedures and protected children.Calling SB 14 “a law that prohibits hospitals from administering experimental hormones or conducting mutilative ‘gender transition’ surgical procedures on minors,” the Texas AG’s office said in a statement that 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.”
And on Thursday, the Texas Supreme Court sided with the AG’s office, allowing the transgender procedure ban for minors to go into effect on Sept. 1, as planned.
Conservatives praised the decision, with Jonathan Covey, policy director of Texas Values, a conservative group that supported the law, saying in a statement obtained by The Epoch Times that “Texas kids are safer today” because of the ruling.
“Protecting children from harmful and dangerous gender transition surgeries and puberty blockers is in the best interests of the child and something we all agree on,” Mr. Covey said.
“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,” the groups wrote.
“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,” they continued.
The groups vowed to continue pressing their case, saying that “the fight is far from over” and that they “look forward to continuing this fight.”
More than 20 states have adopted laws to ban some transgender procedures for minors, although some are not yet in effect.
Also, about a half-dozen federal courts have blocked bans on so-called “gender-affirming care” for children, which proponents argue is “medically necessary” to lower the likelihood that people suffering from gender dysphoria will commit suicide.
That’s in part because most of the underlying research failed to control for the time elapsed after transgender procedures, with the researchers suggesting that people who get such procedures may be subject to an initial “honeymoon period” that evaporates over time as they revert to similar levels of suicidal ideation as before.
“There may be implications for the informed-consent process of gender-affirming treatment given the current lack of methodological robustness of the literature reviewed,” the study authors wrote.