AUSTIN (Talk1370.com) -- A Travis County district court judge has temporarily blocked an effort by the State of Texas to investigate the parents of a transgender teen, issuing a temporary restraining order in the case.
The order, issued Wednesday afternoon by Travis County District Judge Amy Clark Meachum, blocks the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) from investigating the parents of the 16-year old teen.
The legal wrangling is part of a new lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Texas, the ACLU, and Lambda Legal, who represent the parents of the 16-year old teen, one of which is a state employee. Also named as a plaintiff is Houston-based psychologist Dr. Megan Mooney. The suit names Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters, and DFPS itself as defendants.
Abbott’s order, issued last week, orders all “mandatory reporters” to notify the DFPS of any trans child receiving gender-affirming care. Abbott also believes parents of those children should be prosecuted.
Abbott issued his order in lockstep with Attorney General Ken Paxton’s nonbinding opinion issued last month, which states that giving children access to sex reassignment surgery, puberty blockers, and testosterone and estrogen treatments are child abuse.
However, those beliefs fly in the face of the opinions held by several medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychological Association, who have all said the new Lone Star State edict is dangerous and that it inhibits necessary medical treatments.
The temporary restraining order only applies to this case for now; next week, Meachum will decide if Abbot's order should be blocked across the state.
While the family's identities are concealed in the lawsuit, Jane Doe is a DFPS employee who “works on the review of reports of abuse and neglect.” Jane Doe’s husband John Doe and their 16-year-old transgender daughter, identified as Mary Doe, are also represented as plaintiffs.
According to the ACLU, Jane Doe is on leave from her position with DFPS due to her daughter’s ongoing transition and has already been visited by an investigator seeking Mary Doe’s medical records and an interview with the family.
Abbott, Paxton and the ongoing investigation have “terrorized the Doe family and inflicted ongoing and irreparable harm,” the ACLU said.
Mooney is a "mandatory reporter" according to state law, which the ACLU says has left her in an "untenable position" according to the lawsuit. If Mooney refuses to report her patients to DFPS, she puts herself in jeopardy of criminal penalties and losing her license. But if she follows the order and reports her patients, she “would be violating her professional standards of ethics and inflict serious harm and trauma on her clients,” according to the suit.
Already, some of the state’s district attorneys have publicly stated that they will neither investigate nor prosecute cases involving trans children’s gender-affirming care.
“I will not prosecute any parent, any facility, or anyone else for providing medically appropriate care to transgender children,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg told Texas Public Radio.