Texas Won't Be Able To Throw People In Jail For Being Good Parents To Trans Kids ... For Now
A judge has issued an injunction.
Back in February, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and his sidekick, AG Ken Paxton, got together to make it illegal for parents and doctors to provide care to trans children beyond yelling at them that they will just have to suck it up and pretend to be the gender they were assigned at birth. Neither of them had or have any clue what the gender affirmative model is, nor did they have any desire to look into it, so they imagineered their own version of what it was and then criminalized it based on that.
To be fair, the version they invented in their heads was pretty bad and irresponsible, and if it existed anywhere in any reality in the known universe, it would be quite fair to ban it. Unfortunately, along with criminalizing this imaginary version of gender affirmative care — in which doctors were thoughtlessly slinging out hormones and brand new genitals to any three-year-old playing pretend — they also criminalized the very normal and very thoughtful real version of gender affirmative model supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics , Texas Pediatric Society , and which has long been considered the official standard of care for transgender and gender expansive children by the American Psychiatric Association.
But good news! A judge with a brain in her head has decided that perhaps this is not the greatest idea in the world and has dropped an injunction on Gregg Abbott's grand plan to throw parents and doctors who give gender affirmative care to children in prison for child abuse.
Via CNN:
"The court finds sufficient cause to enter a temporary injunction," Judge Amy Clark Meachum in Travis County said Friday evening.The judge said Abbott's order was "beyond the scope of his authority and unconstitutional" and that the parents of a transgender child and a psychologist who filed suit against the governor were likely to succeed at trial, which is set for July. [...]
Meachum ruled in district court last week the state must stop a child abuse investigation of a family seeking gender-affirming health care for their transgender child. That decision came after the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas and LGBTQ civil rights organization Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit on behalf of the parents of a transgender girl. The child's mother, a DFPS employee, was suspended from her job because of Paxton's legal opinion.
Abbott and Paxton appealed Meachum's decision, but the state's Third Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal over jurisdiction.
Good .
It's clear what this is all about. Bigoted adults feel like they're being left behind by the culture — which they are — and they think if they can stop gender affirmative care, if they can stop people from coming out as transgender or nonbinary, they'll have a little more time getting to live in a world they feel they understand. Unfortunately, this hurts children. It hurts parents. It hurts medical professionals who want to give children the best standard of care.
Hopefully, Judge Meachum is correct and the parents and doctor of that child will win in court and Texas will not be looking at a future filled with kids being taken away from loving, caring parents and those parents being thrown in prison for doing what's right for their children. Because there's no way that would end well.
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Don't forget Missouri.
Well, since we unofficially capped our SPED numbers, I'd say he's pretty much against them. Besides, he got his injury after a tree fell on him while was jogging in a Houston park. The city of Houston settled with him for ten grand a month, a settlement which would not be possible to obtain now, with the tort reform he championed.
So, he's a garbage person. He also hates Hispanics, though he's married to one.