THE TEXAS TRIBUNE<\/a> \u2013 The Texas Supreme Court tossed temporary injunctions Friday that halted child abuse investigations against parents who allowed their transgender kids to access puberty blockers and hormone therapy, in large part because the state has closed such inquiries into three families who sued and a fourth child is now an adult.<\/p>\nThe court\u2019s ruling did not determine whether providing such healthcare to kids constitutes child abuse, as Attorney General Ken Paxton concluded in a nonbinding legal opinion in 2022. The legal battle seeking to shield parents from such state investigations began before Texas banned doctors outright from providing puberty blockers and hormone therapies to kids for gender transitioning.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate comment from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.<\/p>\n
Four families and the organization PFLAG, Inc. had won temporary injunctions stopping DFPS from investigating reports of trans minors using puberty blockers and hormone therapy. While the agency\u2019s appeal of the temporary injunctions were pending, DFPS officials permanently closed its investigations and a fourth child has now reached their 18th birthday. As such, the Texas Supreme Court ruled, there was no need to keep the temporary injunctions in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere exists no credible, nonspeculative threat that DFPS will investigate these plaintiffs in the future based on the use of medical treatments for gender transitioning, either because DFPS has already ruled out these families for such an investigation or because the children\u2019s having reached the age of majority deprives DFPS of authority to investigate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The case began four years ago shortly after Gov. Greg Abbott notified DFPS that the attorney general\u2019s office had issued an opinion that concluded it is \u201cagainst the law to subject Texas children to a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning.\u201d The governor\u2019s letter directed the agency \u201cto conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures\u201d in Texas. As a result the agency announced it would follow the law.<\/p>\n
A week later, parents of a then 16-year-old child diagnosed with gender dysphoria and a psychologist who treats such children sued the Governor, the DFPS Commissioner, and DFPS in Travis County. A few months after that, three more families brought a similar suit. A Travis County trial court ultimately issued three separate orders temporarily enjoining DFPS and its commissioner from investigating allegations regarding children\u2019s use of drugs for the purpose of gender transitioning.<\/p>\n
Three of the families had their cases closed with no further investigation or action. The fourth child, that former 16-year-old, is now an adult and the agency can no longer investigate their case.<\/p>\n
This article\u00a0first appeared\u00a0on The Texas Tribune.\u00a0The Texas Tribune<\/a>\u00a0is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans \u2014 and engages with them \u2014 about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Texas Supreme Court lifted temporary injunctions protecting three families and members of PFLAG, Inc. AUSTIN, Texas \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-264781","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}