The Texas Supreme Court allowed the state’s prohibition on transgender medical operations for children to go into force on Thursday.
The decision came after a judge imposed an injunction against the law last Friday in response to a complaint filed by families of transgender youth and doctors. The law will go into force on Friday.
“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,” lawyers for the families said in a joint statement reported by Reuters.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has not issued a statement in response to the court’s judgment. His office had challenged the injunction to the state Supreme Court, which placed the lower court injunction on hold and permitted the statute to take effect.
The plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court for an emergency order halting the statute while their appeal is heard, but the court declined their request without explaining why.
According to the Texas lawsuit, Senate Bill 14 violates parental rights and discriminates against transgender teenagers. In June, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill. At least 20 states have prohibited transgender medical operations for children, including Texas.
Impact of SB 14 on transgender youth and families
SB 14 would make it illegal for transgender kids to receive hormone therapy, puberty blockers, or transition operations. Children who have received this treatment in the past must be weaned off.
According to the lawsuit, the law will have negative effects on transgender teenagers who are unable to get gender transition treatment as prescribed by their parents and clinicians.
“As a father, my primary goal is to ensure that Luna is safe, taken care of, and has everything she needs to thrive,” one plaintiff, the father of a transgender 12-year-old girl, said in the lawsuit. “Because of recent political attacks against transgender Texans, and [the law] SB 14 in particular, my ability to be a great dad for my kid has become much more difficult.”
Legal challenges to transgender medical procedure bans in other states
The lawsuit alleges that many transgender teenagers will “face the whiplash of losing their necessary medical treatment and experiencing unwanted and unbearable changes to their body.”
District Judge Maria Cantu Hexsel of Travis County in Austin ruled last Friday that the families were likely to prevail in their challenge to the legislation, which she noted “stands directly at odds with parents’ fundamental right to make decisions concerning the care of their children.”
Hexsel, a Democrat, also concluded that the statute discriminates against transgender youth because of their gender identity and interferes with the doctor-patient relationship and doctors’ rights to practice medicine.
Lawsuits have been filed in other states against similar bans, and judges have halted those laws from taking effect.