Disclaimer: No part of this webpage constitutes legal advice. Please contact Lambda Legal, the ACLU of Texas, or other attorneys if you need legal counsel.
Protecting trans Texans’ ability to have accurate IDs
LATEST: The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and Department of State Health Services (DSHS) announced in August 2024 that they would no longer follow court orders to update gender markers on people’s driver’s licenses, state IDs, and birth certificates.
For more information and resources, see our fact sheet and info from TENT.
Fighting back against efforts to ban gender-affirming medical care for minors
LATEST: The Texas Supreme Court issued a decision in June 2024 holding that Senate Bill 14, which bans necessary medical care for transgender youth in Texas, does not violate the Texas Constitution.
In July 2023, Lambda Legal, the ACLU of Texas, ACLU National, the Transgender Law Center, and the law firms Scott Douglass & McConnico LLP and Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP sued the State of Texas and state officials to preserve access to evidence-based, life-saving health care following the Texas Legislature’s passage of Senate Bill 14.
This law bans necessary and evidence-based medical care for Texas’s transgender youth, cuts off access to care for adolescent minors already receiving treatment, and requires the state to revoke the medical licenses of physicians providing the best standard of care to their trans patients.
The plaintiffs challenging this law included five Texas families, three medical professionals, and two organizations representing hundreds of families and health professionals across the state. PFLAG is the nation’s first and largest organization dedicated to supporting, educating, and advocating for LGBTQ+ people and those who love them. GLMA is the oldest and largest association of LGBTQ+ and allied health professionals, including those who treat LGBTQ+ patients.
This lawsuit was filed in Travis County District Court and sought to block S.B. 14. There was a temporary injunction hearing in Austin on Aug. 15-16, 2023; and, based on two days of evidence and testimony, the district court entered an order blocking enforcement of S.B. 14 on Aug. 25. The Texas Attorney General appealed that decision and Plaintiffs sought emergency relief from the Texas Supreme Court to reinstate the district court’s ruling and to stop enforcement of S.B. 14 while it considered the State’s appeal.
On Aug. 31, 2023 the Texas Supreme Court denied Plaintiffs’ request for emergency relief, which allowed S.B. 14 to take effect on Sept. 1. On June 28, 2024, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that SB 14 likely did not violate the rights of transgender young people, their parents, or their doctors under the Texas Constitution.
Even as this lawsuit under the Texas Constitution ends, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken up a similar challenge from Tennessee under the U.S. Constitution, and we will continue to vigorously defend the rights of trans youth in Texas and across the country. We urge our elected officials to focus on solving real problems, instead of targeting trans Texans and rolling back freedoms for the entire LGBTQIA+ community. We also support all Texans continuing to show up for each other at the ballot box, at the statehouse this upcoming legislative session, and in our communities to ensure that we all have the freedom to be ourselves—no matter our gender, race, or background.
You can read the Texas Supreme Court’s decision here on the Texas Supreme Court’s website and learn more about the case here.
Earlier in 2023, the Texas Attorney General announced investigations into two hospitals that have provided care to transgender youth: Dell Children’s Medical Center and Texas Children’s Hospital. If you or someone you know has been a patient at these hospitals, you can help protect your private information by following these instructions and sending this letter to your medical provider. You may also contact the Lambda Legal Help Desk for more information.
If you or someone you know has had their access to health care interrupted because you are transgender, you may want to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Protecting parents and guardians from investigation for providing transgender adolescents with best-practice medical care
On February 22, 2022, Attorney General Ken Paxton released a non-binding opinion claiming that essential health care for transgender youth is “child abuse” under Texas law. The next day, Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Family Protective Services (DFPS) to investigate families of transgender youth who receive gender-affirming health care. Later that day, DFPS Commissioner Jamie Masters said the department would investigate families for providing this care.
These leaders’ actions were a cruel attack on vital and life-saving health care supported and endorsed by every major medical association in the United States and decades of scientific research. Any teachers, health care providers, and other mandatory reporters can access more information here.
Since March of 2022, we have won more than a dozen court orders at the district, appellate, and Texas Supreme Court, finding that Abbott, Masters, and DFPS’s actions are likely unlawful and caused irreparable harm. Most recently, the Third Court of Appeals in Austin affirmed the preliminary injunctions that block investigations into families based solely on medical care for the treatment of gender dysphoria. The State has now asked the Texas Supreme Court to review those injunctions, but they remain in effect even as we see whether the Court will grant that review.
Read more about those rulings here and you can visit the case pages at ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal to see all of these decisions and case filings.
Some of the court orders apply specifically to PFLAG members and the named plaintiffs in our cases. If you are interested in joining or learning more about PFLAG, please click here.
Pushing back against efforts to target PFLAG for supporting transgender adolescents and their families
On February 9, 2024, PFLAG National—the country’s largest organization dedicated to supporting, educating, and advocating for LGBTQ people and those who love them—received civil demands from the Office of the Attorney General of Texas to turn over documents, communications, and information related to the organization’s work helping families with transgender adolescents in Texas. PFLAG National is a plaintiff in the above-mentioned lawsuits filed against restrictions on gender-affirming medical care for adolescents in Texas: Loe v. Texas, challenging SB 14, the state’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors, and PFLAG v. Abbott, challenging the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services’ rule mandating investigations of parents who work with medical professionals to provide their adolescent transgender children with medically necessary healthcare.
On February 29, 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU, Lambda Legal, the Transgender Law Center, and the law firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP filed a separate lawsuit–PFLAG v. Office of the Attorney General of Texas–on behalf of PFLAG National in Travis County District Court. This case challenges the Attorney General’s investigative demands as exceeding the Attorney General’s authority, attempting to subvert the discovery process in the separate lawsuits challenging SB 14 and the DFPS Rule, and seeking to violate PFLAG’s and its members’ constitutional free speech and association rights, as well as the right to be free from unconstitutional searches and seizures.
On March 1, 2024, the district court issued a temporary restraining order blocking these demands. On March 25, 2024, the district court issued a temporary injunction finding that the Plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of prevailing in this lawsuit and stopping the Attorney General from enforcing the demands.
After a trial on June 14, the district court ordered the demands to be substantially modified to protect PFLAG and its members’ constitutional and legal rights.
For more information about these lawsuits and how to join PFLAG, visit https://pflag.org/resource/texas-faq/.