AUSTIN, Texas – The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and the Transgender Law Center pledged Thursday to file a lawsuit against a sweeping new law banning transgender youth from accessing medically necessary health care that the Texas Legislature just sent to the governor's desk.
Texas Senate Bill 14 bans the only evidence-based care for gender dysphoria for transgender people under 18 and aims to strip doctors of their medical licenses for providing their patients with the care they know to be medically necessary. Texas lawmakers have ignored the warnings of transgender youth, their families, and the medical establishment about the harms of this law. Similar restrictions in Alabama and Arkansas have been enjoined by federal courts, and legal advocates have filed challenges in federal court to bans enacted in Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Montana. A state court judge in Missouri recently blocked enforcement of the Missouri attorney general’s emergency order blocking provision of gender-affirming care.
The aforementioned organizations issue the following joint statement:
“We will be filing a lawsuit to protect transgender youth in Texas from being stripped of access to healthcare that keeps them healthy and alive. Coming on top of the effort last year to classify providing medically necessary and scientifically proven care to transgender youth as child abuse and threatening to tear Texas families with transgender children apart, an effort currently blocked in state court, Texas lawmakers have seen fit to double down.
“They are hellbent on joining the growing roster of states determined to jeopardize the health and lives of transgender youth, in direct opposition to the overwhelming body of scientific and medical evidence supporting this care as appropriate and necessary. Transgender youth in Texas deserve the support and care necessary to give them the same chance to thrive as their peers. Medically necessary health care is a critical part of helping transgender adolescents succeed in school, establish healthy relationships with their friends and family, and live authentically as themselves. We will defend the rights of transgender youth in court, just as we have done in other states engaging in this anti-science and discriminatory fear-mongering.”
Bans like S.B. 14 are opposed by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
If you or someone you know needs mental health resources or support, please visit:
—Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 or https://www.translifeline.org
—Trevor Project at 866-488-7386 or https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
