ACLU of Texas

Attorney General Ken Paxton, in an appeal, is asking the courts to lift an injunction that stopped the state from conducting child abuse investigations over transition-related medical care for transgender youth. Paxton argued that the families — belonging to PFLAG, an LGBTQ advocacy group — did not suffer injuries as a result of the Department of Family and Protective Services’ investigations.

A June lawsuit against the state, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal representing the families of transgender youth, resulted in a temporary injunction which paused the DFPS investigations, ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott earlier last year.

Paxton filed the brief on Friday in response to the plaintiffs’ request that the injunction be upheld in January. In his reply, Paxton sought to overturn that court-order injunction issued in September.

The 3rd Court of Appeals will determine if the injunction will hold up, either by hearing from both sides in oral arguments or simply ruling on the briefs filed. Until then, the injunctive relief will remain in place, according to Karen Loewy, senior counsel and director of constitutional law practice for Lambda Legal.

“There was nothing new about the State’s arguments at all, and thus far, they’ve been rejected by every court that has heard them,” Loewy said in an email.

If the court sides with Paxton, it’s not clear if the DFPS investigations of parents of trans kids would resume. The agency declined to comment on the litigation.

[…]

Paxton said the families have not experienced specific injuries stemming from these investigations, arguing that parents have not lost custody of their children as a result of the investigation and therefore that claim has no standing.

“Thus, [families] have not been injured and their suit is not ripe until their injury is imminent or has already occurred,” Paxton wrote in his appeal.

PFLAG asserted that the state interfered with their parental rights, which are guaranteed in the Texas Constitution. Abbott’s directive ordering DFPS to investigate families has instilled fear in LGBTQ youth who are afraid the state will separate them from their parents. Abbott’s order even forced one family to flee the state.

Paxton also said that PFLAG, which has 600 members, shouldn’t be allowed to stand in for families who could be investigated for child abuse. He said the individual families must participate in the lawsuit in order to provide evidence of injury by the particular investigations directed by Abbott.

See here for the background. I don’t even have the words to respond to the claim that the targeted families have not “experienced specific injuries” from these investigations or the threat of them; that the argument is being made by the guy who fled from a process server because he “feared for his safety” just adds to the mind-melting gall of it. This will make it to the Supreme Court, assuming that one of the many anti-trans bills currently polluting the Lege doesn’t make it all moot. Anyway, there’s your update.

Abortion funds’ lawsuit against the “sanctuary cities” guy tossed by SCOTx

Mar 1st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Unfortunate.

The Texas Supreme Court upheld the right of an anti-abortion activist to call abortion advocacy groups criminal enterprises and emphasized the state’s 1921 law criminalizing abortion is in force.

In the majority and the concurring opinions issued Feb. 24, the Supreme Court took on three abortion advocacy groups that hoped to proceed with defamation claims in state trial courts against anti-abortion activist Mark Lee Dickson and his organization Right to Life East Texas.

Two courts of appeals came to different conclusions, with the Seventh District finding the defendants’ statements protected political speech and the Fifth District finding Dickson’s statements inconsistent with the Penal Code and permitting the defamation suit to continue.

Justice Jane Bland, writing for the court, held the statements “are protected opinion about abortion law made in pursuit of changing that law, placing them at the heart of protected speech under the United States and Texas Constitutions.”

Dickson, during the course of a “Sanctuary City for the Unborn” campaign meant to get local municipalities in Texas to pass resolutions declaring themselves sanctuary cities, used promotional materials and social media that included statements such as abortion groups were criminal organizations and murderers.

During oral argument last October, Jennifer Ecklund of Thompson Coburn, the attorney for Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity, Texas Equal Access Fund and Afiya Center, said, “People are afraid to express their view for fear that they will also be called literal criminals who might be prosecuted, based on things that they believe were totally constitutional based on this court’s pronouncements and the U.S. Supreme Court’s pronouncements.”

Bland noted the statements were made before Roe v. Wade was overturned and amid decades of fervent debate regarding the morality and legality of abortion.
“Equally apparent is that such statements reflect an opinion about morality, society, and the law,” Bland wrote. “The collective impression is not that Dickson was disseminating facts about particular conduct, but rather advocacy and opinion responding to that conduct. Dickson invited the reasonable reader to take political action.”

[…]

The majority opinion affirmed the Seventh District appeals court ruling and reversed the Fifth District’s ruling, remanding both to their respective trial courts for entry of dismissal orders.

See here and here for the background. I was obviously way too optimistic about this one. I can see the Court’s reasoning but I think they got it wrong. Not much else to say. Bloomberg Law has more.

In support of Crystal Mason

Feb 23rd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Hoping for the best.

The same month Tarrant County officials announced the creation of an election integrity task force, a group of 14 bipartisan prosecutors threw their weight behind an effort to acquit the woman at the center of a high-profile voting fraud conviction in the county.

Crystal Mason, a Tarrant County resident, was sentenced to five years in prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election. Mason, who was on supervised release for a federal felony, was ineligible to vote, and while her ballot was never counted, Tarrant County prosecutors charged her with illegal voting. Mason has maintained that she did not know she was ineligible and her case has gained national attention among the media and civil liberty advocates.

Now, Mason is appealing her conviction for a second time in front of the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth, after the state’s highest appeals court told those judges to reconsider their previous decision.

Their decision did not take into account whether Mason knew she was ineligible.

A bipartisan group of former state and federal prosecutors, organized by the States United Democracy Center, filed an amicus brief Feb. 14 in support of Mason’s appeal. Among the signees is Sarah Saldaña, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas and former director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“I had this visceral reaction to the injustice manifested in the decision, No. 1, to prosecute, but also the ultimate conviction,” Saldaña said. “It’s obvious that this whole issue of intent was not charged in the jury charge. … That to me was very offensive, particularly as a former prosecutor, and particularly as the principal decision maker in North Texas, at the time when I was U.S. attorney.”

Mason’s intent is a key aspect of the amicus brief’s argument. The signees call her prosecution “outside the bounds of any reasonable exercise of prosecutorial power,” and point to wording in Texas’ illegal voting statute that requires voters have “actual knowledge” that they were committing a crime by voting.

Without enforcing the actual knowledge requirement, the signees argue Texas voters will be afraid to vote at all for fear of accidentally running afoul of voting laws.

“Ms. Mason’s prosecution sends the troubling message that casting a provisional ballot carries a serious risk, with a consequent chilling effect on the use of provisional ballots,” the prosecutors wrote. “This chill would likely disproportionately impact minority voters, who tend to cast more provisional ballots.”

See here and here for some background. There’s hope after that CCA ruling, but even if her conviction is overturned, Tarrant County could choose to try her again. And then there’s this:

Statewide, efforts by Republican lawmakers to make illegal voting a felony again are gaining steam. It’s currently a misdemeanor, after lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1 in 2021; the bill, among other things, lowered the penalty for illegal voting conduct.

Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth, filed House Bill 397 to reverse that change. Sen. Bryan Hughes, who represents East Texas, filed a companion bill in the Senate, which was referred to the state affairs committee for review Feb. 15.

One of the Republican legislative goals for this session is to ensure there is a steady stream of Crystal Masons in the future. Overturning this conviction can’t do anything about that. Oh, and this is what actual voter suppression looks like. There are other ways to do it as well, but when it happens it’s very clear what it is.

Where we are on the agenda

Feb 16th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Greg Abbott targets transgender college sports ban.

Gov. Greg Abbott wants to ban transgender college students from competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity, adding momentum to a Republican proposal that’s condemned by LGBTQ advocates and progressive groups.

“This next session, we will pass a law prohibiting biological men to compete against women in college sports,” Abbott said in a Saturday interview at the Young America’s Foundation “Freedom Conference” in Dallas.

The Republican governor said he believes “women, and only women, should be competing [against each other] in college or high school sports.”

Transgender K-12 student athletes are already prohibited from competing on teams that don’t associate with their sex at birth, under a measure passed by Republican lawmakers in 2021. The author of that bill, state Rep. Valoree Swanson of Spring, is proposing extending the restriction this session to the college level.

State Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, has introduced a similar measure in the upper chamber.

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has already said he supports the college ban in the Texas Senate, which he oversees. On Monday, he listed it among his 30 top priorities for the session.

I’ll get back to this in a minute, but just as a reminder, there are very few transgender women who compete in NCAA athletics and fewer of them have actually won anything, this would force transgender men who are taking testosterone and thus would have a real competitive advantage over assigned-female-at-birth athletes (go google Mack Beggs to see what I mean), and it would put Texas in conflict with the NCAA. But first, the Dan Patrick agenda.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced a list Monday of 30 wide-ranging bills that he has designated his legislative priorities, including providing property tax relief and increasing natural gas plants to improve the reliability of the state’s power grid. He also detailed more specifically his plans to push a socially conservative agenda that would ban certain books in schools, restrict transgender student athlete participation in collegiate sports and end gender-transition treatment for young people.

In a statement announcing his priority bills, Patrick said he believed Texans largely supported his proposals because they “largely reflect the policies supported by the conservative majority of Texans.”

You can read on, but basically this session will be a nightmare for the LGBTQ community.

“I think most Texans want to live in a free and fair state, where the government is not attacking us, our families or our kids,” said Brian Klosterboer, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “The Texas Senate in recent years has been obsessed with bullying LGBTQ youth, especially those who are transgender. In the last couple of years, transgender youth in Texas have been under constant attack from the government.”

Texas lawmakers proposed dozens of LGBTQ restrictions in the 2021 legislative session, and this year’s tally has already reached 72, according to a bill tracker put together by the advocacy group Equality Texas.

Klosterboer said the proposals are not only harmful but unconstitutional — and the ACLU and other civil rights groups would stop them from taking effect if they advanced.

[…]

Johnathan Gooch, spokesman for Equality Texas, said lawmakers should pay attention to how even just debating these bills can have a grave impact on LGBTQ youths’ mental health.

A 2022 Trevor Project study found that 47 percent of LGBTQ youth considered suicide that year and 16 percent had attempted it.

“If our lawmakers were truly interested in protecting youth, then they need to find ways to protect LGBTQ young people because the campaigns they’ve been running against them have been really harmful and really painful for everyone,” he said.

They’re not interested, and I don’t have much faith that the courts will stop them. I wish I felt differently. I keep saying it, nothing is going to change until we change who we elect to state office.

Speaking of the NCAA:

The Texas NAACP is calling on professional sports and the National Collegiate Athletic Association to boycott Texas over Gov. Greg Abbott’s attempt to end diversity hiring programs on college campuses and in state government.

“The governor’s initiative will do enormous harm and take the state backwards,” NAACP president Gary Bledsoe said Tuesday.

Bledsoe and Black leaders in the Texas Legislature said they are sending letters to the NCAA, as well as the NBA, NFL and MLB, to request their help. More specifically, Bledsoe called for not awarding any additional all-star games, Super Bowls or other championship events in Texas.

The NCAA in particular has several major events planned in Texas, including the men’s basketball Final Four in Houston in April and the women’s basketball Final Four in Dallas. In 2024, Houston is scheduled to host the College Football Playoff championship and San Antonio is the host city for the 2025 NCAA men’s basketball Final Four. The MLB All-Star Game in 2024 is scheduled for Globe Life Field in Arlington.

The financial hit from losing those events could be massive — a 2017 report, for instance, showed that when San Antonio hosted the NCAA Final Four in 2018, it was set to generate $234 million in total economic impact because of the tens of thousands of visitors.

See here for the background. There was a brief moment, mostly in 2017, when the NCAA and some sports leagues attempted to stand up for LGBTQ rights and voting rights by moving certain events out of certain states. That moment didn’t last, and I’m not optimistic about it coming back. When the national attention is focused elsewhere, it’s really hard to get it to turn your direction. But at least this is a pressure point that can be acted on right now. It’s worth the effort, but it’s going to take some big numbers.

It’s going to be a brutal legislative session for LGBTQ folks in Texas

Jan 10th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I really wish this weren’t the case, but it is. It’s going to be bad.

Two bills that would ban classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in Texas public schools before certain grade levels are poised to receive top Republican backing in this year’s legislative session. But critics warn that the legislation could further marginalize LGBTQ students and families while exposing teachers to potential legal threats.

The two bills — authored by Reps. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, and Jared Patterson, R-Frisco — closely resemble legislation out of Florida that critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law. House Bill 631 and House Bill 1155 are among a flurry of anti-LGBTQ legislation awaiting lawmakers when they return to the Capitol on Tuesday.

Florida’s law prohibits schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade. Both Texas bills mirror such a ban. Toth’s HB 631 would expand the restriction until fifth grade. Patterson’s HB 1155 would extend it to eighth grade.

Their proposals would also prohibit lessons on sexuality and gender identity at any grade level if they are “not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” Patterson’s bill doesn’t define what is appropriate for various age groups. Toth’s bill requires the lessons to align with state standards but doesn’t specify which standards.

Like Florida’s law, the two Texas bills don’t explicitly ban the use of the word “gay” in schools. The bills’ authors also maintain that the legislation would protect “parental rights” by allowing parents to more directly control what their children learn in school, including the existence of different sexual orientations and gender identities.

“Parental rights are paramount to the safety and well-being of a child,” Patterson said in a Jan. 3 tweet introducing his bill. “Therefore, I filed HB 1155 to ensure no school teaches radical gender ideology to any child from K-8th grade, and where parents must review and sign off on any health-related services.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has signaled that he would support passing a Texas version of the Florida law — even before these bills were filed.

“I will make this law a top priority in the next session,” he said in a campaign email last April.

Critics of the legislation argue that the bills’ vague nature would suppress discussion related to LGBTQ issues and representation.

“The reality is that everybody has a gender identity and sexual orientation; avoiding those conversations is incredibly difficult,” Adri Pérez, an organizing director with Texas Freedom Network, told The Texas Tribune. “What it becomes is a tool to be leveraged specifically against LGBTQIA+ people, because what stands out is not the people who fit in but the people who are being specifically targeted and attacked as being different.”

[…]

Chloe Kempf and Brian Klosterboer, attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said the bills could pose explicit risks to teachers and school districts in the form of lawsuits from parents who believe they’re not following the law.

Toth’s bill outlines a mechanism for parents to sue school districts for violating his proposals, which includes the parental notification portion of that bill. Experts say that part of these bills could require teachers to potentially out their students, and parents could sue districts if teachers don’t comply. School districts would be saddled with the cost of those lawsuits, experts say.

More broadly, Kempf said, the bills would pose risks to schools and educators in the form of potential ultra vires claims, which enable citizens to sue public officials who violate state laws. Although it’s not clear if these types of lawsuits would be successful, Klosterboer said, the larger impact is more confusion and headaches for schools.

“When a law is vague, it allows for discriminatory and targeted enforcement. And it also creates a very hostile and chilling atmosphere where people … go out of their way to self-censor,” Kempf said.

The bills’ vague language could also present challenges for schools trying to protect teachers from potential lawsuits.

“[Schools] might not even know what to tell teachers and staff how to actually protect themselves and protect the school district,” Klosterboer said.

Klosterboer added that it seems “very likely” that if Gov. Greg Abbott signs one of the bills into law, it would invite legal challenges.

[…]

Ultimately, LGBTQ advocates argue that these legislative actions are just another attack on an already marginalized population. As of last week, Texas Republican lawmakers have already filed 35 anti-LGBTQ bills for the 2023 session, far outnumbering the number of such bills that were filed ahead of the 2021 session, according to [Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas].

“The legislation is meant to stigmatize LGBTQ people, isolate LGBTQ kids, and make teachers fearful of providing safe and inclusive classrooms,” he said.

There is ongoing litigation over Florida’s “don’t say gay” law. It will eventually be decided by SCOTUS. So yeah, that’s going great, too.

I would like to say something encouraging here. For sure, plenty of smart and passionate and dedicated people will do everything they can to fight these terrible bills, and you should do everything you can to help them. But the reality is that the Republicans have the numbers. They can pass whatever bills they want. This is what they want to do, and they believe they have a mandate after the 2022 election. They’re not going to stop until they’re voted out. Again, I wish I could tell you something else, but I can’t. It’s going to be a very rough six months. The Observer has more.

The “abortion sanctuary cities” lawsuit at SCOTx

Oct 28th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

A big decision this will be.

The Texas Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over whether a defamation case brought by several abortion funds against prominent anti-abortion activist Mark Lee Dickson should be dismissed.

In 2019, Waskom in Harrison County became the first Texas city to largely outlaw abortion and groups that assist it, like abortion funds, by adopting a Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn ordinance, following a campaign started by Dickson.

Then in 2020, three abortion funds — the Afiya Center, Texas Equal Access Fund and Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity — sued Dickson, the director of Right to Life of East Texas, for defamation. Dickson had referred to the groups, which provide financial assistance to patients seeking abortions, as “criminal organizations” in statements on social media.

On Wednesday, Dickson’s attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, said his client’s statements were not defamatory because they were true.

“They are criminals because they have violated the criminal laws of Texas, which imposes felony criminal liability on any person who quote ‘furnishes the means for procuring an abortion,’” said Mitchell, a former solicitor general of Texas. He is also the architect behind the the state law that made performing an abortion illegal after fetal cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy.

[…]

In particular, Mitchell argued that Texas never repealed an 1897 law that punishes those “furnishing the means for procuring an abortion” and that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, didn’t make funding another person’s abortion a constitutional right.

“The court should say that these statements, far from being nondefamatory, are actually true to prevent future lawsuits like this from ever getting off the ground,” Mitchell argued. “This has been a campaign to intimidate constitutionally protected speech.”

Mitchell added that there are other grounds to dismiss the case, arguing that the abortion funds would have to prove Dickson made his statements with “reckless disregard for the truth.”

Beth Klussman, an attorney for the state of Texas, also spoke in support of Dickson. She argued that his statements were protected because they were opinions, similar to how opponents of the death penalty refer to executions carried out by the state as murder. Attorney Jennifer Ecklund, who represents the abortion funds, responded that Dickson’s language should be considered a factual statement because it was specific rather than about broad topics.

“We have a defendant who specifically said I am telling you as a fact that this is the state of the law and that these people are committing crimes,” she said. “That is a very singular set of facts.”

Ecklund added that the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling made Texas’ pre-Roe law in question unconstitutional at the time, and therefore calling the abortion funds “criminal” infringes on their freedom of speech and association. And she said the groups have been complying with the law since the Dobbs decision.

“People are afraid to associate with them. People are afraid to donate. People are afraid to express their views for fear that they will also be called literal criminals who might be prosecuted based on things that they believe were totally constitutional,” Ecklund said.

See here for the background. I think Dickson’s defense is contrived and should be rejected, but it has just enough plausibility that it could persuade SCOTx that is has meaning. I’d love to hear what the lawyers think. This is a ruling on a motion to dismiss, so I’m assuming that the suit has previous survived such a motion at the district court and with the appellate court. We’re supposedly expecting an answer in the spring. You know what I’m rooting for.

Charges dropped against Hervis Rogers

Oct 24th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Good, but this whole thing was an enraging travesty and in no way makes things right.

Hervis Rogers

Voter fraud charges against Hervis Rogers, who garnered widespread attention for waiting hours in line to vote at a Houston polling location during the March 2020 presidential primary, have been dismissed.

Attorney General Ken Paxton ordered Rogers’ arrest in July 2021 on charges that he voted while on parole. Over a year later, after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reiterated that the attorney general doesn’t have the ability to unilaterally prosecute election crimes, a district court judge has dropped the two counts of illegal voting against Rogers.

“I am thankful that justice has been done,” Rogers said in a statement.

After serving time for a 1995 burglary conviction, Rogers had been out on parole since 2004. His parole ended in June 2020. In Texas, knowingly voting while on parole or probation is a second-degree felony, which could result in up to 20 years in prison. But Rogers said he wasn’t aware of his ineligibility, and advocates pointed to the fact that he had waited for six hours to vote — while working two jobs, including one that starts at 6 a.m. — as evidence of this.

Rogers is over 60 years old, so a conviction could have resulted in what amounted to a life sentence.

“It has been horrible to go through this, and I am so glad my case is over. I look forward to being able to get back to my life,” he added in the statement.

See here for the background. As a reminder, Hervis Rogers was initially jailed on a $100,000 bond – which is higher than what is often assessed on murder suspects – in Montgomery County. Not Harris County, where he voted, but Montgomery because Ken Paxton figured he’d have a better shot at conviction there. Literally everything about this was wrong, and it’s only because the Court of Criminal Appeals actually applied the state constitution that an even larger miscarriage of justice was avoided. Now if there were justice, Hervis Rogers would be able to sue not only the state of Texas but Ken Paxton personally for the needless suffering inflicted on him. None of that is going to happen, but the one thing we can do is vote Ken Paxton out of office, and never give him the chance to do this to someone else. The Chron has more.

Fifth Circuit does its thing with appeal of voter purge case

Oct 2nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Get out the rubber stamp.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

A federal appeals court has ruled that Texas does not need to release details about a list of 11,737 registered voters whom the state has identified as potential noncitizens.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Thursday reversed a lower court’s ruling in August in which a district judge had found Texas was violating federal law by refusing to release the list.

The appellate court found that the five civil rights groups suing the Texas secretary of state for the list did not have standing to sue. Circuit Judge Edith H. Jones wrote in the ruling that the groups have neither established injury to themselves from the state’s refusal to release the list nor sued on behalf of any voter included on the list who could be harmed.

The coalition “offered no meaningful evidence regarding any downstream consequences from an alleged injury in law under the NVRA [National Voter Registration Act],” Jones wrote. “The lack of concrete harm here is reinforced because not a single Plaintiff is a Texas voter, much less a voter wrongfully identified as ineligible.”

The groups suing the state are the Campaign Legal Center, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Demos. The groups, which sued the state in February for failing to comply with the NVRA’s public disclosure requirements, sought to hold Texas accountable if it incorrectly misidentified registered voters as noncitizens and disenfranchised naturalized citizens.

“We are disappointed with the court’s opinion and are exploring our options with respect to any next steps,” Molly Danahy, the Campaign Legal Center’s senior legal counsel for litigation, said in a statement. We will continue to monitor potential voter purges in Texas because transparency is vital to a healthy democracy and all citizens deserve to have equal access to the ballot.”

See here and here for the background. I didn’t find any discussion of this in the usual places I look on Twitter, so I don’t know if there’s a hint of merit to the ruling or if it’s wholly made up. Given the recent history of this circuit and that top-level bad actor Edith Jones wrote it, you can probably guess what I think. The Fifth Circuit not only gets no benefit of the doubt from me, they get a presumption of doubt. This is simply not a legitimate court, and this wasn’t even their worst ruling of the week. Burn it all down.

Broader injunction issued to halt DFPS investigations of trans kids’ families

Sep 18th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Good.

Texas’ child welfare agency is once again blocked from investigating parents who provide gender-affirming care to their transgender children. The injunction applies to any family that belongs to PFLAG, an LGBTQ advocacy group with more than 600 members in Texas.

The injunction also specifically protects a handful of families named in the suit, including the Briggles, outspoken advocates for transgender youth who were among the first to be investigated under this directive.

This is the latest chapter in a monthslong legal battle over whether providing medically indicated gender-affirming health care, under the guidance of a doctor, could result in a finding of child abuse by the state.

In February, following a nonbinding legal opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents who provide gender-affirming care to their transgender children.

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that Abbott had no grounds to direct DFPS to investigate these families but overturned a statewide injunction on procedural grounds.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal brought another lawsuit after that first injunction was overturned, seeking protections on behalf of all members of PFLAG. Travis County District Judge Amy Clark Meachum granted that injunction Friday, three months after hearing arguments.

See here for the previous update and here for a copy of the ruling. This injunction will benefit a lot more families as noted by the story, but we know that it will be appealed and ultimately the Supreme Court will have the final word, so celebrate responsibly. Assuming it hasn’t been mooted by that point, there will be a trial on the merits in Judge Meachum’s court next June. The ACLU, Lambda Legal, Amber Briggle, and the Chron have more.

State ordered to turn over voter purge data

Aug 5th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Very good.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

A federal judge ruled this week that the state is violating U.S. law by refusing to release its list of more than 11,000 registered voters that it identified as potential noncitizens, and ordered the release of the data within 14 days.

A coalition of civil rights groups sued the Secretary of State’s Office in February for withholding the data concerning a voter purge program targeting immigrants that was mandated by a new Republican-backed election law.

The new elections law, passed after a heated partisan battle last summer, requires that the office conduct regular sweeps of the voter rolls to verify citizenship status by cross-checking data provided by the Texas Department of Public of Safety.

The groups are concerned that thousands of immigrants could have their voter registrations canceled based on outdated or incorrect records, a potential repeat of a botched voter purge in 2019 that ended with a court settlement restricting who could be targeted in future purges.

The state had attempted to cancel registrations of almost 100,000 registered voters, but many were later found to be naturalized citizens or others who had been flagged in error. About 70,000 immigrants are naturalized in Texas each year on average and become eligible to vote.

Without the data on the purge initiated earlier this year, the groups say they can’t confirm that the state is complying with the 2019 settlement agreement. Within months of the new program’s launch, county officials warned the state that the lists included people who registered to vote at their naturalization ceremonies.

“We’ve kind of seen this movie before in 2019,” said Danielle Lang, senior director for voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, which represented the civil rights groups. “Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence suggests the same thing is happening despite Texas’ claims that it’s following 2019 settlement agreement. We’re glad to finally be able to get access to the data, so the public can better understand what this process looks like and why eligible citizens are being caught up in the system.”

See here for the background. The Secretary of State has amply demonstrated that it cannot be trusted in matters like this. They need to be watched like a hawk, and that means they need to be completely transparent about every step they take. As with the other voter registration case we heard about this week (*), the Fifth Circuit is a threat, but maybe not as bog a threat in this one. The state could accept the ruling and provide the data – surely they want to show they have nothing to hide, right? – but I’m not that naive. We’ll see what they do next.

(*) As it happens, the judge for both of these cases is Lee Yeakel, a George W. Bush appointee. He has had himself a busy week.

Another injunction issued to halt DFPS investigations of trans kids’ families

Jul 10th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

New case, different families.

A Travis County judge on Friday granted a narrow injunction against the state of Texas that will continue to block investigations of child abuse for two families who allowed their children to receive gender-affirming care.

The suit was brought by three Texas families and national LGBT advocacy group PFLAG in response to the Department of Family and Protective Services resuming the investigations this spring, after the Texas Supreme Court ruled it could in a similar but separate case.

“The DFPS Rule was given the effect of a new law or new agency rule, despite no new legislation, regulation, or even valid agency policy,” said Judge Amy Clark Meachum, a Democrat, in granting the injunction, which will last until the case’s resolution.

Like another Travis County judge who granted a temporary restraining order that blocked the investigations into the plaintiff families, Meachum wrote in her ruling Friday that restarting the inquiries would cause “immediate and irreparable injury” to them.

Unlike the previous injunction, however, Meachum’s order does not apply to all members of the chapter-based group PFLAG.

Meachum said Friday that she will “consider legal and factual consideration” and “rule as soon as possible” on whether to do so. Adam and Amber Briggle, the third plaintiff family, was also not included in Friday’s injunction, as their CPS case was closed after the lawsuit was filed.

[…]

There have been 11 investigations of parents of Texas transgender youth, testified Marta Talbert, a director of the state’s Child Protective Investigations unit who was called as a witness by state lawyers. Talbert said five have been closed and two are close to being closed.

The other four cases are stayed by the court through litigation. Talbert said this was either because the state found the youth were not on any kind of puberty blockers or hormones or, more often, because their doctor was able to provide information about their care to investigators.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs disputed that the investigations were being held up for purely administrative reasons and said there seemed to be “further activity” by the child welfare agency on them, contradicting Talbert’s testimony.

See here for a copy of the judge’s order. As the story notes, the state has already filed an appeal, so this will end up before the Supreme Court again in fairly short order. I’m going to go through a bunch of previous posts to review the history so far, but first let’s look at the Statesman story for some further details.

Meachum’s temporary injunction blocked the child-welfare agency from taking any action against the families other than to close its investigations — if that can be done without further contact with the parents or children.

The controversy began in February when Paxton issued a nonbinding legal opinion that said gender-affirming care was prohibited by state child-abuse laws. National medical experts said Paxton relied on false claims, exaggerations and errors to reach that conclusion, but Abbott followed with a Feb. 22 letter directing the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate such care as abuse, and the state’s child-welfare agency agreed to do so.

Legal challenges followed.

The first lawsuit was filed by a mother, identified only as Jane Doe, who worked for the Department of Family and Protective Services and came under investigation after asking a supervisor what Abbott’s directive meant for her transgender teen. Meachum responded in March by issuing a statewide injunction barring all abuse investigations based solely on providing gender-affirming care.

Paxton’s bid to overturn the injunction is still before the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals, but in the meantime, the Texas Supreme Court substantially limited the scope of the judge’s order, striking down the statewide injunction in May while allowing it to apply only to the Doe family.

When Child Protective Services resumed child abuse investigations, three more families filed suit, this time joined by PFLAG, a leading LGBTQ advocacy organization. Last month, a different Travis County judge responded by issuing a temporary restraining order blocking investigations into the three families and any member of PFLAG.

On Wednesday, during a daylong hearing in Austin on whether to convert the restraining order into a longer-lasting injunction, lawyers for Paxton argued that state law gives the child welfare agency the authority to protect minors from abuse, including the potentially improper use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

To recap, the first lawsuit to block investigations resulting from Greg Abbott’s executive order, which in turn followed Ken Paxton’s nonbinding opinion, came on March 1, with a DFPS employee and her family, including her 16-year-old daughter, as plaintiffs; Amy Clark Meachum was the judge in this case as well. They won a restraining order, which was then appealed and upheld by the appellate court. On March 11, Judge Meachum issued a statewide injunction to stop the state from investigating anyone for child abuse based solely on the allegation that they provided gender-affirming medical treatment, and anyone from being prosecuted for child abuse for providing gender-affirming care and lifts the mandatory reporting requirements laid out in the directive. This was upheld by the appellate court after some shenanigans by Ken Paxton. On May 13, the Supreme Court upheld the original injunction for the first family that sued but overturned the statewide injunction, which allowed DFPS to pursue other investigations if it had grounds to do so. At that time, DFPS employees said that “agency leadership has acknowledged that these investigations do not meet the current requirements for child abuse and have said policy would need to be generated to match the governor’s directives”, which I believe is what Judge Meachum is citing in this ruling. DFPS did resume some investigations, which led to another lawsuit filed on behalf of three families, who were granted a restraining order by a different Travis County judge, Jan Soifer. One of the three plaintiff families in that case is the Briggles, whose investigation has since been closed by DFPS, which I believe means they are no longer party to that suit, though I could be wrong about that. And that, I believe, catches us up. Whew!

From here the usual pattern will be followed. The restraining order is being appealed, and if history is any guide it will be upheld by the Third Court and go from there to SCOTx. In the meantime, there will be a hearing for a permanent injunction, which according to Judge Meachum’s order will be on December 5. SCOTx may or may not get around to weighing in on the restraining order before then. Most likely some other suits similar to these current two will be filed, and perhaps DFPS will publish an update to their requirements to make their investigations less susceptible to these lawsuits. I have no idea how long that process may take or what the new requirements might look like. I don’t think there’s any relevant federal activity that could have an effect, but that may change, and I might be wrong about that. Needless to say, the 2022 election will have an effect as well.

One more thing, from the Chron story:

The state called as a witness James Cantor, a clinical psychologist based in Ontario, Canada, who said his reviews of studies have found that the majority of children with gender dysphoria no longer end up having symptoms of the condition after hitting puberty and instead “tend to realize they are gay or lesbian.”

Most of the studies he cited in a blog post making the same argument were published before 1988. Gender identity disorder did not make an appearance in the nation’s manual of mental disorders until 1980.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys objected to Cantor’s testimony, saying the studies referenced were not of transgender youths but rather “tomboys” or “effeminate” youth. They also pointed to a North Carolina district court opinion that found that Cantor lacked personal experience or expertise treating minors with gender dysphoria and therefore gave his testimony “very little weight.”

“It’s a complete misrepresentation of the science, one that frankly is the basis and foundation for all of Paxton’s opinions, Gov. Abbott’s directive and the department’s actions,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior attorney with Lamda Legal. “It’s a fundamental misunderstanding about trans kids because they don’t believe trans kids should exist.”

This is your reminder that the state’s entire case is built on bullshit and lies, and should be laughed out of the courtroom. The Los Angeles Blade has more.

SCOTx re-enables statewide abortion ban

Jul 3rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Ugh.

The Texas Supreme Court has blocked a lower court order that had allowed clinics in the state to continue performing abortions even after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it’s landmark 1973 ruling that confirmed a constitutional right to abortion.

It was not immediately clear whether the clinics in Texas that resumed performing abortions just days ago would halt services again following the ruling late Friday night. A hearing is scheduled for later this month.

The whiplash of Texas clinics turning away patients, rescheduling them, and now potentially canceling appointments again — all in the span of a week — illustrates the confusion and scrambling that has taken place across the country since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

An order by a Houston judge on Tuesday had reassured some clinics they could temporarily resume abortions up to six weeks into pregnancy. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton quickly asked the state’s highest court, which is stocked with nine Republican justices, to temporarily put that order on hold.

“These laws are confusing, unnecessary, and cruel,” said Marc Hearron, attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, after the order was issued Friday night.

Clinics in Texas — a state of nearly 30 million people — stopped performing abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court last week overturned Roe v. Wade. Texas had left an abortion ban on the books for the past 50 years while Roe was in place.

Attorneys for Texas clinics provided a copy of Friday’s order, which was not immediately available on the court’s website.

See here and here for the background; Steve Vladeck provides a bit more context. You can see a summary of the order (order 22-0527) here. The relevant bits:

The parties are directed to submit briefing by 5 p.m. July 7, 2022 regarding whether the 269th District Court of Harris County, Texas, has jurisdiction to enjoin the enforcement of a criminal statute. See State v. Morales, 869 S.W.3d 941 (Tex. 1994). Real parties in interest are requested to respond to relators’ petition for writ of mandamus by 5 p.m. July 11, 2022. This order does not preclude further proceedings in the court of appeals and district court, including proceedings to address the jurisdictional issue described in paragraph 2 above. The Court is confident that those courts will proceed expeditiously.

[Note: The petition for writ of mandamus remains pending before this Court.]

The 269th Civil Court in Harris County, which issued the temporary restraining order that SCOTx has now lifted, has a hearing scheduled for July 12 to determine whether an injunction can be granted. We may get that on the 12th or 13th, and then subsequent rulings from SCOTx shortly thereafter. I assume the writ of mandamus was filed by the Attorney General to supersede all this and just declare that there’s nothing stopping them from enforcing that 1925 law that criminalized abortion. Don’t you just love it when this kind of order drops on the Friday evening of a holiday weekend? Axios, the WaPo, the NYT, and the DMN have more; as of Saturday morning when I drafted this the Trib had not yet published anything and the Chron was carrying this same AP story. Like I said, Friday night, holiday weekend.

UPDATE: Here’s the Trib story.

Temporary restraining order granted to abortion clinics in trigger lawsuit

Jun 29th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Some abortions are temporarily legal in Texas again.

Abortions up to about six weeks in pregnancy can resume at some clinics in Texas for now after a Harris County District Court judge granted a temporary restraining order that blocks an abortion ban that was in place before Roe v. Wade.

In the ruling issued Tuesday, Judge Christine Weems ruled that the pre-Roe abortion ban “is repealed and may not be enforced consistent with the due process guaranteed by the Texas constitution.”

“It is a relief that this Texas state court acted so quickly to block this deeply harmful abortion ban,” Marc Hearron, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a press release. “This decision will allow abortion services to resume at many clinics across the state, connecting Texans to the essential health care they need. Every hour that abortion is accessible in Texas is a victory.

Whole Woman’s Health, which operates abortion clinics in McAllen, McKinney, Fort Worth and Austin, said it would resume providing abortions as a result of this ruling.

“We immediately began calling the patients on our waiting lists and bringing our staff and providers back into the clinics,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, the organization’s president and CEO.

Abortions can resume only at the clinics named in the lawsuit. Besides the Whole Woman’s Health clinics, the others that will resume operations are Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services in San Antonio, Brookside Women’s Medical Center and Austin Women’s Health Center in Austin, Houston Women’s Clinic and Houston Women’s Reproductive Services in Houston, and Southwestern Women’s Surgery Center in Dallas.

A hearing has been set for July 12 to decide on a more permanent restraining order.

[…]

On a press call Tuesday, Hearron declined to speculate on what the temporary restraining order on the pre-Roe ban might mean for other clinics and abortion funds in the state.

“I don’t know that I have an answer to that question,” he said. “I think that’s a legal question that the other clients would want to look at.”

While some abortion access has been restored in Texas, current state law still allows abortions only up to around six weeks of pregnancy, a point at which many people don’t even know they are pregnant.

“So there still will be a large number of Texans who are still going to need to try to find access and appointments outside of the state,” Hearron said.

See here for the background. This will of course be appealed, so as I said before it will ultimately come down to what the Supreme Court says, if they choose to weigh in at all – they may decide to slow roll it, given that the whole thing will be moot in at most about two months. Not deciding when they don’t have to is a specialty of theirs.

As for the question of other providers, the Chron has a bit of input.

It’s unclear whether the injunction applies to clinics that are not party to the suit, such as Planned Parenthood.

The CEOs of Texas Planned Parenthood affiliates said in a joint statement Tuesday that their clinics had no immediate plans to resume offering abortions, but added: “This is a rapidly evolving situation and legal teams are still reviewing this order and its potential implications.”

The case could also offer a lifeline to Texas abortion funds, which provide transportation and other assistance to people seeking abortions, after they shuttered Friday, citing concerns of criminal liability.

Seems like it’s worthwhile to me to at least get the clarity and some assurance that you won’t be arrested for something that may have happened five minutes after Ken Paxton decided it was illegal. I Am Not A Lawyer, your mileage may vary, etc etc etc. I still think they should at least give serious thought to filing their own claims. We’ll see.

Lawsuit filed over Texas trigger law implementation

Jun 28th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

One last fight before the curtain comes down.

Texas abortion providers are making a last-ditch effort to temporarily resume procedures by challenging a pre-Roe v. Wade abortion ban that has not been enforced for nearly a half-century, but that some abortion opponents argue could be enforced after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.

The providers filed a lawsuit on Monday, and a Harris County judge will hear arguments on Tuesday for implementing a temporary restraining order to block enforcement of the old ban, which criminalized both performing abortions and assisting anyone who performs abortions in Texas.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, some Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion activists have argued that old state statutes banning abortion may have instantly gone back into effect following the Supreme Court’s announcement that it would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Texas abortion clinics stopped all procedures, and abortion funds ceased operating in the state after the Supreme Court ruled Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that affirmed abortions as a constitutional right for nearly five decades. Some doctors had to halt procedures moments before they were set to perform them because of concerns that old state abortion laws that had been blocked by Roe could now once again be criminally enforced.

“We will fight to maintain access for as long as we can,” Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights — one of the plaintiffs challenging pre-Roe restrictions — said in a statement. “Every day, every hour that abortion remains legal in Texas is a chance for more people to get the care they need. The clinics we represent want to help as many patients as they can, down to the last minute.”

Last year, Texas passed a “trigger law” to ban abortions if the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade. The law will go into effect 30 days after the court issues a judgment repealing Roe.

Though the court issued its opinion signaling its intention to overturn Roe on Friday, it’s unclear when the formal judgment will come. Paxton said the judgment could take a month. He said his office will announce the effective date for the trigger law as soon as possible.

However, laws predating Roe v. Wade in Texas that ban abortion are still on the books — leading some to argue they’re valid again and that there’s no need to wait for the trigger law to seek criminal penalties for performing abortions in the state. Paxton noted this on Friday, saying “some prosecutors may choose to immediately pursue criminal prosecutions.”

But a 2004 case in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that by passing abortion laws — such as regulations on the availability of abortions for minors and the practices of abortion clinics — the Texas Legislature repealed its old bans and replaced them with regulations that implied those statutes were no longer in effect. And because the Supreme Court has yet to issue its formal judgment, it’s unclear whether the pre-Roe statutes can be enforced until that happens.

[…]

The pre-Roe laws include more detailed provisions than Texas’ trigger ban, including the potential to charge anyone who “furnishes the means” for someone to obtain an abortion. The threat of criminal charges has been enough to chill both abortion procedures as well as funding for Texans to travel and obtain abortions outside the state.

“It’s going to be very difficult for anyone to take on the threat of criminal prosecution in order to test these theories because the harm inflicted by the criminal justice system is immediate,” said Elizabeth Myers, an attorney who represents abortion funds.

Some abortion providers have already said they will resume procedures if a court gives them the protection to do so before Texas’ trigger ban takes effect.

“If these laws are blocked, I plan to provide abortions for as long as I legally can,” Dr. Alan Braid, abortion provider and owner of Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement Monday. “I started my medical career before Roe v. Wade and never imagined our country would go back to criminalizing doctors and preventing us from helping women.”

A copy of the complaint is here, and a brief thread from the ACLU of Texas, representing the plaintiffs, is here. I’d find this all fascinating as an academic exercise if it weren’t so fucking depressing. The complaint is long and I didn’t read it, but the bottom line question is simple enough. That said, similar efforts in Louisiana and Utah have succeeded, at least for now, so that offers a bit of hope. I just wonder if SCOTx will let a TRO stand if they are asked to weigh in. The Chron has more.

Restraining order given in latest lawsuit to stop DFPS investigations

Jun 11th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Good.

An Austin judge has temporarily stopped the state from investigating many parents who provide gender-affirming care to their transgender children. The state has ruled out allegations of child abuse against one family under investigation, but at least eight more cases remain open.

Travis County District Judge Jan Soifer issued a temporary restraining order Friday in a lawsuit filed on behalf of three families and members of PFLAG, an LGBTQ advocacy group that claims more than 600 members in Texas.

Brian K. Bond, executive director of PFLAG National, applauded the decision to stop what he called “invasive, unnecessary and unnerving investigations.”

“However, let’s be clear: These investigations into loving and affirming families shouldn’t be happening in the first place,” Bond said in a statement.

[…]

This new lawsuit, filed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal, seeks to block investigations into all parents of transgender children who belong to PFLAG.

During Friday’s hearing, Lambda Legal’s Paul Castillo revealed that the state has ruled out allegations of child abuse against Amber and Adam Briggle, who were under investigation for providing gender-affirming care to their 14-year-old son.

The Briggle family, outspoken advocates for transgender rights, once invited Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton over for dinner. Five years later, they ended up at the center of a child abuse investigation that stemmed, in part, from a nonbinding legal opinion that Paxton issued in February.

While their case has been closed, many others remain ongoing. Castillo said one of the families involved in the lawsuit was visited by DFPS investigators Friday morning.

“I do want to highlight for the court that every plaintiff in this case has illustrated the stress and trauma of even the potential of having a child removed, merely based on the suspicion that the family has pursued the medically necessary course of care that is prescribed by their doctor for gender dysphoria,” Castillo said.

See here for the background, and here for an account from Lambda Legal. The investigation into the Briggle family had apparently been dropped before the hearing, but as noted the others were still active. The judge has directed the lawyers to schedule a hearing in the coming days, at which time we’ll see if the order gets extended. While DFPS had restarted investigations following the Supreme Court’s lifting of the statewide injunction, the investigation of the family from that original case is still paused, so most likely these families will get the same relief. It’s just a shame that they have to go to such lengths to get it.

I would encourage you to read this Twitter thread by DMN reporter Lauren McGaughy, who live-tweeted the hearing. It’s obvious from the way the state argued the case and responded to the judge’s questions that they know they’re on extremely shaky ground – they’re minimizing the Abbott/Paxton order at every turn, and just not engaging the questions as much as they can. That’s not a guarantee of success for these or other plaintiffs going forward, and the next Legislature could enshrine these orders as law if the Republicans remain in control, but it’s important to see the lack of faith in their own case. The Chron has more.

New lawsuit filed to stop DFPS “investigation” of trans kids and their families

Jun 9th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

From the inbox:

The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal, and the ACLU of Texas, along with Texas-based law firm Baker Botts LLP, today filed a new lawsuit in Texas state court on behalf of PFLAG National and three Texas families. The suit requests that the court block state investigations of PFLAG families in Texas who are supporting their transgender children with medically necessary health care.

The lawsuit names Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who issued a February directive stating that health care that is medically necessary for treating gender dysphoria should be considered a form of child abuse. The suit also names Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) Commissioner Jaime Masters and DFPS as defendants.

“For nearly 50 years, PFLAG parents have united against government efforts to harm their LGBTQ+ kids. By going after trans kids and their families, Gov. Abbott has picked a fight with thousands of families in Texas and across the country who are united as members of PFLAG National,” said Brian K. Bond, Executive Director of PFLAG National. “Loving and affirming your child and empowering them to be themselves is the highest calling of any parent, no matter your child’s gender. If it takes a court ruling to ensure that the law protects families who lead with love in support of transgender Texans, so be it.”

PFLAG provides confidential peer support, education, and advocacy to LGBTQIA+ people, their parents and families, and allies. With a nationwide network of hundreds of chapters—including 17 in Texas—PFLAG National works with families, schools, and communities to build safety and support for transgender youth.

In an earlier lawsuit brought by the ACLU, Lambda Legal, ACLU of Texas, and Baker Botts, the Texas Supreme Court upheld part of an appeals court order preventing DFPS from investigating parents who work with medical professionals to provide their adolescent transgender children with medically necessary health care. That case, Doe v. Abbott, is still pending.

While the Texas Supreme Court emphasized that neither Attorney General Ken Paxton nor Governor Abbott have the power or authority to direct DFPS to investigate the provision of essential and often lifesaving medical care for transgender youth as child abuse, the court limited the order blocking all investigations to the specific plaintiffs who filed suit.

“It is indefensible for any state leader to repeatedly attack trans Texans and weaponize the child welfare system against the loving families of transgender kids and teens.” said Adri Pérez, policy and advocacy strategist at the ACLU of Texas. “We will continue to fight against these baseless attacks on our community. Transgender kids deserve to have life-saving gender-affirming care in Texas, so that they might live safely to grow up to be transgender adults. During this Pride Month, we must take a stand against government leaders that are hellbent on stoking fear, and trying to criminalize transgender young people and their families.”

“Notwithstanding the clear language in the recent Texas Supreme Court ruling that Attorney General Paxton and Gov. Abbott do not have the power or authority to direct DFPS to investigate loving families who are providing medically necessary care for their transgender adolescents as child abuse, the agency seems determined to target these families and threaten to tear them apart,” Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Paul D. Castillo said. “With today’s filing, we are joining with PFLAG in working to protect all Texas families who simply want to make sure their children are safe, happy, and healthy. It is unconscionable that the state wants to interfere in that relationship.”

See here for some background, and here for a copy of the lawsuit, filed on behalf of two anonymous families plus the Briggle family. With the resumption of these investigations by DFPS, this is the only way for these folks to protect themselves. Based on what has happened so far I would expect them to get their restraining orders, and after that we’ll have to see what happens with the original case and its eventual appeals. Until we can get a better government in place, I hope we see more of these lawsuits, enough to cover everyone who will need it. The Trib has more.

DFPS to resume investigating families of trans kids

May 21st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Gross and discouraging.

The state of Texas will restart its abuse investigations into families with transgender kids after a recent court ruling that lifted a statewide injunction on such probes.

In a statement on Thursday, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said the agency would investigate all allegations of abuse. The statement, while not addressing the investigations into medical treatments for trans youth, indirectly indicated that these probes will now continue.

“DFPS treats all reports of abuse, neglect, and exploitation seriously and will continue to investigate each to the full extent of the law,” the statement read.

Current state law does not explicitly define gender-affirming medical treatments, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, as child abuse. A DFPS spokesman did not comment when asked if the agency plans to continue investigating such treatments as child abuse.

Age appropriate and individualized medical treatments for trans youth, including the ones Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has called abuse, are supported by the state and nation’s largest physicians groups including the American and Texas Medical Associations. These groups have opposed the state’s abuse investigations and other efforts to block or alter gender-affirming care for minors.

The state’s announcement came just days after the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the attorney general and Gov. Greg Abbott, who had directed the agency to investigate certain medical treatments for trans adolescents as child abuse, had no authority to do so. It put control over these probes back into the hands of protective services, which opened at least nine investigations into families with transgender children since the governor issued his directive in February.

One investigation into an agency employee who has a transgender daughter will remain paused while the family fights to overturn the abuse policy, the ruling stated.

[…]

Brian Klosterboer, an attorney with the ACLU of Texas who is on the team representing the unnamed DFPS employee, said the state’s decision to reopen the cases is unfortunate and unlawful. He said his team believes that the high court’s decision removes any responsibility for Texans to report trans youth getting treatments.

“We are going to be closely monitoring what the agency does. We would encourage families that have any reason to believe that they have an investigation to seek legal help,” Klosterboer said.

“Abbott’s letter and Paxton’s opinion did not change Texas law,” he added. “Gender-affirming health care is still legal in all 50 states.”

See here for the previous entry. The initial litigation is still ongoing – as is so often the case in these battles, the issue is over whether or not the law or in this case executive order can be enforced while the lawsuit is being heard – so there may still be a statewide injunction at some point. There’s also a clear path for other families to file similar lawsuits to get injunctions for themselves, similar to what abortion providers and funds were facing with SB8. It’s still a mess and a huge burden for these people that have done nothing wrong and just want to be left alone. And it’s another reason to vote these guys out in November. The Trib has more.

SCOTx issues mixed ruling on transgender child abuse investigations injunction

May 14th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

We’ll just have to see what happens next.

Texas’ child welfare agency remains blocked from investigating the family of a transgender teen that sued the state in March, but can once again investigate other families that provide gender-affirming care after the Supreme Court of Texas struck down a statewide injunction Friday.

Though it overturned the injunction on procedural grounds, the high court raised questions about why the Department of Family and Protective Services opened these investigations in the first place. The court affirmed in Friday’s ruling that neither Attorney General Ken Paxton nor Gov. Greg Abbott had any grounds to direct the agency’s actions.

[…]

“The Governor and the Attorney General were certainly well within their rights to state their legal and policy views on this topic, but DFPS was not compelled by law to follow them,” Friday’s ruling reads. “DFPS’s press statement, however, suggests that DFPS may have considered itself bound by either the Governor’s letter, the Attorney General’s Opinion, or both. Again, nothing before this Court supports the notion that DFPS is so bound.”

The ruling does note the myriad “informal mechanisms” through which elected officials can influence a state agency, but “ultimately, however, one department or another has the final say.”

[…]

In this case, the ruling said, DFPS was responsible for deciding whether these investigations aligned with current state regulations — and will now have to decide whether to continue these investigations and allow new ones to be opened.

DFPS employees have told The Texas Tribune that agency leadership has acknowledged that these investigations do not meet the current requirements for child abuse and have said policy would need to be generated to match the governor’s directives.

In March, a district judge granted an injunction blocking the state from continuing these investigations or opening new ones. Paxton appealed that decision to the Third Court of Appeals, which reinstated the statewide temporary injunction.

He then petitioned the Supreme Court of Texas to review that appeal. In Friday’s ruling, the high court agreed with Paxton that the appeals court overstepped — while the appeals court can reinstate an injunction if it “preserves the parties’ rights,” they cannot reinstate a temporary injunction of any nature.

In this case, the justices ruled, the “parties” are the family that sued the state initially — not all parents of all transgender children.

Ian Pittman, an Austin attorney representing two families of transgender children that are under investigation for child abuse, said the injunction had allowed his clients to “breathe a sigh of relief” while their investigations were paused. Although the investigations can resume, he’s hopeful that DFPS will now close out the cases.

“This ruling reaffirms that [DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters] acted improperly when she acknowledged the directive and said they would follow it,” he said. “She was abdicating her responsibilities as commissioner to a political stunt that has no legal authority.”

If DFPS does not close out the cases, he expects other families may consider bringing suits to get any investigations against them similarly blocked.

See here and here for the most recent entries. There were multiple written opinions plus some concurrences and dissents, so just go here and look for case 22-0229 if you want to slog through them. I’ve seen varying reactions to the ruling and will link to them, but this Daily Kos piece is the closest to my own feelings.

Now, some folks are celebrating Friday’s ruling as a win, as the court does explicitly say the governor does not have the “authority to investigate, prosecute, or impose reporting requirements regarding child abuse allegations.” The court also pointed out that neither Abbott nor Paxton could “bind” the Department of Family and Protective Services’ (DFPS) “investigative authority.”

This all sounds encouraging, but again, the court didn’t rule on the ethics of the situation, but whether or not the lower courts were overstepping with the injunction holds. So … What happens now?

DFPS will decide whether or not to continue investigations, as well as whether or not they will open new ones. According to this ruling, the agency was responsible for determining if the investigations met state regulations, to begin with. Per The New York Times, it is not clear whether the ruling will cause the agency to resume investigations right away (or at all) or not.

If the department closes the cases, we can breathe a sigh of relief. If it doesn’t close the cases? It’s likely many more parents will sue the state.

For me? I’m taking it as a cautious win, but I’m not outright celebrating until the agency confirms those cases are closed and that more aren’t on the way.

I’m open to persuasion on this, but until and unless someone changes my mind, I’m waiting to see what DFPS does next, and hoping that as many parents of trans kids are preparing to file their own suits as possible, just in case. Here are statements from the ACLU and Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, and the Chron, the Texas Signal, and the Texas Observer have more.

Crystal Mason’s conviction to be reconsidered

May 12th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Good news.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has told a lower appeals court to take another look at the controversial illegal voting conviction of Crystal Mason, who was given a five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while she was on supervised release for a federal conviction.

The state’s court of last resort for criminal matters on Wednesday ruled a lower appeals court had wrongly upheld Mason’s conviction by concluding that it was “irrelevant” to Mason’s prosecution that she did not know she was ineligible to cast a ballot. The ruling opens the door for Mason’s conviction to ultimately be overturned.

Mason’s lawyers turned to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after the Tarrant County-based Second Court of Appeals found that her knowledge that she was on supervised release, and therefore ineligible to vote, was sufficient for an illegal voting conviction. Mason has said she did know she was ineligible to vote and wouldn’t have knowingly risked her freedom.

On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the lower court had “erred by failing to require proof that [Mason] had actual knowledge that it was a crime for her to vote while on supervised release.” They sent the case back down with instructions for the lower court to “evaluate the sufficiency” of the evidence against Mason.

[…]

In Wednesday’s ruling, the court held that the Texas election code requires individuals to know they are ineligible to vote to be convicted of illegal voting.

“To construe the statute to mean that a person can be guilty even if she does not ‘know[] the person is not eligible to vote’ is to disregard the words the Legislature intended,” the court wrote. “It turns the knowledge requirement into a sort of negligence scheme wherein a person can be guilty because she fails to take reasonable care to ensure that she is eligible to vote.”

The court on Wednesday ruled against Mason on two other issues. They rejected her arguments that the lower court had interpreted the state’s illegal voting statute in a way that criminalized the good faith submission of provisional ballots, and that the appeals court had wrongly found she “voted in an election” even though her provisional ballot was never counted.

See here, here, and here for some background. Of particular interest is that the recent voter suppression law played a positive role in this outcome.

Insisting they’re not criminalizing individuals who merely vote by mistake, Tarrant County prosecutors have said Mason’s case is about intent. The case against her has turned on the affidavit she signed when submitting her provisional ballot.

But the legal landscape underpinning Tarrant County’s prosecution shifted while the case was under review, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals noted.

Last year, the Texas Legislature included in its sweeping new voting law several changes to the election code’s illegal voting provisions. The law, known as Senate Bill 1, added new language stating that Texans may not be convicted of voting illegally “solely upon the fact that the person signed a provisional ballot,” instead requiring other evidence to corroborate they knowingly tried to cast an unlawful vote.

The Legislature’s change to the election code — along with a resolution passed in the Texas House regarding the interpretation of the illegal voting statute — are “persuasive authority” that the lower court’s interpretation of the law’s mens rea requirement was incorrect, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled on Wednesday.

Good. This isn’t over for Mason, as this is just about the appeal of her conviction. Even if the appeals court ultimately throws it out after reconsideration, Tarrant County could still pursue this case and who knows, they might be able to convict her again. It sure seems like the spine of the case against her has been removed, though. And no matter how you look at it, she has already suffered consequences far in excess of her original sin, however you measure it. Please let this be over for her. The Dallas Observer has more.

Lawsuit filed over Llano County libraries

Apr 26th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

This is going to be something to watch.

Seven Llano County residents filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the county judge, commissioners, library board members and library systems director for restricting and banning books from its three-branch public library system.

The lawsuit states that the county judge, commissioners and library director removed several books off shelves, suspended access to digital library books, replaced the Llano County library board with community members in favor of book bans, halted new library book orders and allowed the library board to close its meetings to the public in a coordinated censorship campaign that violates the First Amendment and 14th Amendment.

The plaintiffs — Leila Green Little, Jeanne Puryear, Kathy Kennedy, Rebecca Jones, Richard Day, Cynthia Waring and Diane Moster — insist their constitutional rights were violated when public officials censored books based on content and failed to provide proper notice or an avenue for community comment.

When the plaintiffs attempted to check out several removed books, they said, they were denied access.

“Public libraries are not places of government indoctrination. They are not places where the people in power can dictate what their citizens are permitted to read about and learn,” the lawsuit states. “When government actors target public library books because they disagree with and intend to suppress the ideas contained within them, it jeopardizes the freedoms of everyone.”

Plaintiffs’ lawyer Ellen Leonida said she plans to file a preliminary injunction this week to get books back on shelves and access to the digital library distributor, OverDrive, reinstated while the lawsuit is pending. Leonida also wants the lawsuit to serve as a warning that small groups like the one in this case cannot control the availability of books without legal resistance.

“They can’t censor books, unequivocally, based on viewpoints that they disagree with,” Leonida said.

[…]

In November, Bonnie Wallace, who eventually became the vice chair of the new Llano County library board, emailed Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham with a list of 60 books on Krause’s list that were available in Llano libraries, according to emails referenced in the lawsuit and obtained by The Texas Tribune. Later that day, Cunningham directed library system director Amber Milum to remove “all books that depict any type of sexual activity or questionable nudity.”

In addition to library books’ removal, Cunningham told librarians to stop ordering new publications in November, according to the lawsuit.

Listed as the lawsuit’s defendants were Cunningham; Llano County Commissioners Jerry Don Moss, Peter Jones, Mike Sandoval and Linda Raschke; Milum, the library director; and library board members Rochelle Wells, Rhonda Schneider, Gay Baskin and Wallace.

I had to reread this and then check Google to make sure I got this right: We are talking about the PUBLIC LIBRARIES in Llano County, not the school libraries. Do you want Commissioners Court deciding what books you can read? I didn’t think so. Here’s some local coverage with more details.

The lawsuit, “Little et al v. Llano County et al,” is a direct result of recent actions taken by Llano County officials within the library system, including the recent removal of books from library shelves, switching the library system’s online reading services from OverDrive to Bibliotheca, the dissolution and creation of the county’s Library Advisory Board, and the March 9 termination of the head librarian of the Kingsland Branch Library.

The lawsuit is being filed on behalf of plaintiffs Leila Green Little, Jeanne Puryear, Kathy Kennedy, Rebecca Jones, Richard Day, Cynthia Waring, and Diane Moster, all of whom are Llano County residents and users of the library system.

[…]

The complaint claims county officials violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights laid out in the First Amendment, which protects freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, and the press.

Some examples outlined in the legal document are the removal of 12 books, including “In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson, and “Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen” by Jazz Jennings; the suspension of new book acquisitions; and the decision to discontinue use of the online reading service OverDrive, which now operates as Libby.

The complaint also states that the rights laid out in the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees U.S. citizens the right to due process, are being violated.

That part of the complaint argues that the aforementioned actions were done secretively and without due process as laid out in the county’s adopted policies and guidelines published by the Texas Library Association and other industry experts. It also references the county Library Advisory Board’s recent decision to close meetings to the public.

“Bringing legal claims under both the First and Fourteenth amendments allows Plaintiffs to ask the judge not only to order defendants to put banned books back on the shelves and reinstate OverDrive access, but also to mandate certain procedural protections be put in place to ensure that defendants can’t engage in this kind of censorship again in the future,” said Amy Senia, an associate with BraunHagey & Borden.

Evidence provided in the legal document includes direct quotes from emails and other correspondence sent between county officials, advisory board members, and library staff.

The story provides a PACER link to court documents. You lawyers out there, please weigh in on this one. There was a recent Washington Post story about how the fervor for banning books in schools had metastasized into doing the same at public libraries, with Llano County as the focus; there’s a reprint of it here. My favorite detail is that the “new library board stacked with conservative appointees” includes several people who don’t even have library cards. Because of course they don’t. I think you can guess how I’ll be rooting in this one. Daily Kos and the Chron have more.

UPDATE: Speaking of school libraries, there’s some action on that front as well.

The ACLU of Texas last week sent a letter accusing San Antonio’s North East Independent School District of violating the First Amendment by permanently banning 110 books from its school libraries last month.

The April 20 letter, first reported locally by the Express-News, also accused the district of violating its own polices with the book removal. The ACLU demands that the district return the tomes to its shelves, apologize for its “grave missteps” and commit to educating its students on the United States’ “history of racism.”

“All books recommended for removal must be placed back on North East ISD shelves as swiftly as possible,” the ACLU writes. “If the district seeks to review any books for removal in the future, it must follow its written policy for doing so.”

I’ll keep an eye on that as well.

Paxton appeals to SCOTx to re-allow investigations of trans kids’ families

Mar 25th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Of course he did.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has asked the state Supreme Court to intervene to allow child abuse investigations into parents of transgender children. His request comes just days after a Texas appeals court reinstated a temporary injunction blocking the state’s child welfare agency from investigating parents solely because they provide gender-affirming care to their children.

The Texas 3rd Court of Appeals issued the order as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal on behalf of the parents of a transgender teenager who were being investigated by child welfare workers.

“Having reviewed the record, we conclude that reinstating the temporary injunction is necessary to maintain the status quo and preserve the rights of all parties,” three appellate justices wrote.

Paxton has asked the state Supreme Court to overturn that injunction, claiming in a petition filed Monday that the injunction “prevents the State from fulfilling its duty to protect Texas children.”

In a statement, the ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal said that while Paxton’s petition is “not surprising, it is disappointing and dangerous.”

[…]

Until the Texas Supreme Court weighs in, the injunction will continue to block the ongoing — and any new — investigations into Texans accused of child abuse based only on the allegation that they provided gender-affirming medical care.

See here, here, and here for the background. Not much to add, the main thing to know is what’s in that last paragraph – the injunction remains in place until and unless SCOTx takes it away. They can take all the time they want.

Yes, the statewide injunction against investigations into the families of trans kids is in effect

Mar 23rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Good.

A Texas appeals court on Monday reinstated a temporary injunction blocking Texas from investigating parents for child abuse if they allow their transgender children to receive gender-affirming care.

The Texas 3rd Court of Appeals issued the order as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal on behalf of the parents of a transgender teenager who were being investigated by child welfare workers.

“Having reviewed the record, we conclude that reinstating the temporary injunction is necessary to maintain the status quo and preserve the rights of all parties,” three appellate justices wrote.

[…]

District Judge Amy Clark Meachum issued the temporary injunction March 11 after the ACLU and Lambda Legal sued.

The same night Meachum’s injunction was issued, Paxton filed an appeal and claimed he froze the injunction, allowing the state to continue investigations. However, experts said the appeal fell into a complicated legal area, and lawyers had challenged such automatic stays before, claiming the state should not be able to overturn an injunction simply by filing an appeal.

With Monday’s order, the injunction for now will continue to block the ongoing — and any new — investigations into Texans accused of child abuse based only on the allegation that they provided gender-affirming medical care.

See here and here for the background, and here for a copy of the Third Court’s order. Note that none of this is about the merits, just that as is usually the case the district court judge and now the court of appeals has ordered that the original status quo be maintained while the legal question is being answered. As noted when the original injunction was handed down, there will be a hearing in district court on July 11 for a permanent injunction, which is when the merits of the case will be decided.

According to the Chron, this decision will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court, though as of this writing that has not been announced yet. I don’t know if the same “automatic suspension of the injunction” policy that Paxton claimed for the first appeal would be in play in that situation or not, but I am sure that if it’s even a theoretical possibility, Ken Paxton will assert it. We’ll know soon enough.

Is that statewide injunction against investigations into the families of trans kids in effect?

Mar 16th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Ken Paxton wants you to think it isn’t, but it’s not really up to him.

When a judge ruled Friday that Texas could not investigate parents for child abuse simply for providing gender-affirming care, it was immediately clear that the legal fight was far from over.

That same night, Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an appeal and then announced on Twitter that the “Democrat judge’s order permitting child abuse is frozen.”

He said that “[m]uch-needed investigations [will] proceed as they should,” and noted that his “fight will continue up to the Supreme Court.”

Lawyers representing the families of transgender children said they don’t believe the appeal should affect the injunction.

Legal experts say this case falls into a complicated corner of the law until the appeals court weighs in.

[…]

The appeal Paxton filed relies on an argument that would allow for an automatic stay in all trial court proceedings. In a statement, a spokesperson for the Attorney General said that there is “therefore no [temporary injunction] in place until the Third Court reinstates it. Investigations into child abuse may thus continue.”

“It’s up to the court of appeals to decide whether to reinstate the impact of the injunction,” said South Texas College of Law Houston professor Rocky Rhodes. “It’s not automatic, but I think that [the ACLU and Lambda Legal] will have a very strong case to have it reinstated.”

But lawyers have challenged these automatic stays before, claiming the state should not be able to overturn an injunction simply by filing an appeal. Attorney Chad Dunn represented the Texas Democratic Party in a case on mail-in voting in which Paxton made a similar argument.

“That would be an extraordinary rule,” Dunn said. “That is not the rule in federal court or other states that I’m familiar with, that you get an injunction against the state and they can just effectively ignore it until there’s been an appeal completed.”

Dunn said he has seen this argument appear only in recent years, and neither the state’s courts appeals courts or the Texas Supreme Court has definitively affirmed that the state has a right to overturn these injunctions.

“In the cases I’m familiar with, the Court of Appeals has either just glossed over this question or they just say … we’re empowered to issue injunctions, so we’re going to issue the same injunction and keep it in place until such time as we decide the appeal,” he said.

If the Court of Appeals grants similar relief, Rhodes said, that will remain in effect even if the case is appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, as Paxton has said it will be.

See here for the background. The plaintiffs’ lawyers have advised their clients that the injunction is in effect and to not participate in any further investigations, if they happen. DFPS itself issued a statement that says they are “following the law” without specifying what that means, which is entirely the question at hand. The Third Court of Appeals had previously denied Paxton’s appeal of the initial restraining order for wonky legal reasons. It seems likely to me that they will rule that the injunction remains in effect while the matter is being litigated, but it’s not clear to me when such an order from them might be forthcoming. There’s no case information on the Third Court’s website beyond the fact that a notice of appeal has been filed. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Statewide injunction issued against Abbott/Paxton witch hunt

Mar 12th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Some good news to end the week.

State District Judge Amy Clark Meachum ruled Friday that providing gender-affirming care is not a reason for the state to investigate a family for child abuse, and halted all such investigations.

The statewide injunction will remain in effect until “this court, and potentially the Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court of Texas” hear the case, Meachum said.

Meachum said there is a “substantial likelihood” that lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal will prevail in getting Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive for such investigations permanently overturned, calling his actions “beyond the scope of his duty and unconstitutional.”

[…]

Since the directive, the state has opened nine investigations into families who provide this medical care to their children. The injunction stops the state from investigating anyone for child abuse based solely on the allegation that they provided gender-affirming medical treatment. It also stops anyone from being prosecuted for child abuse for providing gender-affirming care and lifts the mandatory reporting requirements laid out in the directive.

Meachum ruled that Abbott’s directive had the effect of a new law or agency rule “despite no new legislation, regulation or even stated agency policy,” which improperly encroached on the legislative arm of the government.

A DFPS supervisor who was called to testify at the Friday court hearing said that the child abuse investigations into families of transgender children are being held to a different standard than other cases.

Investigators can’t discuss cases with colleagues via text or email, and they are required to investigate the cases, even if there’s no evidence of abuse, said Randa Mulanax, an investigative supervisor with DFPS.

Mulanax has decided to resign as a result of this directive after six years with the agency.

“I’ve always felt that, at the end of the day, the department had children’s best interest at heart,” she said. “I no longer feel that way.”

[…]

Lawyers for the ACLU and Lambda argued in court Friday that Meachum should grant a statewide injunction on all of these investigations until the legitimacy of this directive can be argued in trial.

“The defendant’s directives and actions are traumatizing,” said ACLU of Texas attorney Brian Klosterboer. He added that the actions are “killing the ability of transgender youth to continue to get necessary care, and forcing physicians and mandatory reporters … to decide between civil and criminal penalties … and doing what’s right for the health of their patients.”

A lawyer for the state argued that simply opening a child abuse investigation into a family is not necessarily evidence of harm to that family, and that it would be overreach for “the judicial branch to infringe on the executive branch’s ability to perform such a critical task as ensuring the welfare of the state’s children.”

Mulanax said employees have been told not to communicate with colleagues about these cases via email or text message, which she described as unusual and “unethical.”

She said investigators have been told they cannot mark these cases as “priority none,” a designation staff members use when they believe a report does not merit investigation, and must alert department leadership and the general counsel when they’re working on one of these cases.

See here, here, and here for the background, and here for a statement from the ACLU. The state’s argument that merely having CPS open a child abuse investigation into your family is no big deal is just mind-boggling. Like, even if it does eventually go nowhere and the investigators come away telling you that you’re actually doing a swell job as parents, as they told the Briggles, a lot of trauma and very likely lasting damage to your reputation has already happened. I suppose Paxton, who knows a thing or two about being investigated by a grand jury, would argue that that’s no big deal either, since you haven’t been arrested yet. I can name at least two people who would vigorously disagree with that.

The Chron adds a few details.

District Court Judge Amy Clark Meachum, who ruled from the bench late Friday afternoon, said the plaintiffs would suffer “imminent and irreparable injury” if the directive were allowed to stay in place. Among those harms, she said, the mother, who is a DFPS employee, could lose her job; the family would face deprivation of their constitutional rights and the stigma of being subjects of a child abuse investigation; and the daughter would face the loss of necessary medical care.

So far, nine investigations have been opened against parents who are supporting their children’s medical care, DFPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins confirmed. The state and nation’s largest pediatric facility, Texas Children’s Hospital, has temporarily stopped prescribing gender-affirming hormone therapies, and Legacy Community Health has said it’s “analyzing available options.” Several months earlier another program in Dallas pulled its website and halted services to new patients.

“This vast overreach … establishes a new presumption of abuse by parents of transgender children who receive gender-affirming care, triggering investigations of families based solely on the provision of that care and prioritizing those investigations in an unprecedented way,” said Paul Castillo, Lambda Legal’s senior counsel, at the hearing Friday.

[…]

Also Friday, just down the street from the Austin courthouse, more than 100 advocates for LGBT Texans showed up at a public meeting to protest the policy. There were so many people that staff were still unfolding chairs as the meeting started, placing them all the way at the back of the room. Still others sat on the floor.

Dozens held pages of white printer paper in their hands, which contained what they described as statements written by parents of transgender youth who are too afraid of coming under investigation to speak publicly for themselves. The meeting was emotional and angry, and many speakers choked back tears.

“It’s so important that we look up with pride and confidence at the organization” that sets standards for safety for Texas children, said Marie Catrett, who said she has worked as a child care provider for 25 years. “And now I’m looking at this organization possibly being used as a political tool, again, against transgender children. … Your job is not to be political. Your job is to advocate for the safety of children based on facts, based on science, and not for political reasons.”

Outside, advocates held a rally calling for a public outcry against Abbott’s new directive.

Anne Lewis, a board member for Texas State Employees Union, said statements from rank-and-file staff indicate many think asking CPS workers to investigate these families “is baffling, hypocritical and disturbing.”

Lewis quoted one worker anonymously: “I am terrified for families with transgender children.” The worker said she had documented details about a family supporting their transgender teen and now is concerned those details will now be used against them.

Also at the rally was Sam Ames, from The Trevor Project, a LGBT suicide prevention group. He called Paxton’s guidance “a politically motivated opinion that is only going to pit the government against loving families, teachers against students, doctors against patients and neighbors against neighbors, which is language we should all find familiar and has never been on the right side of history.”

Seems Judge Meachum viewed that ridiculous state argument as I did. Of course, this has already been appealed:

.
BREAKING II — AG Ken Paxton has already filed a notice of appeal that will seek to overturn the injunction and allow gender-affirming care to be treated as child abuse in Texas.

— Chuck Lindell (@chucklindell) 6:09 PM – 11 March 2022

Here’s hoping the injunction will at least stay in place as the litigation proceeds. There’s a hearing on July 11 for a permanent injunction if the appellate process allows it to happen at that time.

Ken Paxton repays the Briggle family for their hospitality

Mar 11th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

What a scumbag he is.

When the case worker asked to inspect the house, Amber and Adam Briggle first led her to the kitchen. They opened the cabinets to show they were full of food.

They moved on to the dining room. Every Sunday the Briggles and their two kids, now 14 and 9, sit in those chairs for dinner and talk about gymnastics or their new purple hair. It was around the dining room table where, six years earlier, Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, Angela, sat with the Briggle family eating steak kabobs and watermelon. But last month, Paxton issued a nonbinding legal opinion that gender-affirming health care for transgender kids, like the Briggles’ son, constitutes child abuse. Shortly after, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to investigate the parents of trans kids.

The Dallas-area family now says it is under investigation and at risk of losing the kids.

“When we were notified of the allegations, it was as if the wind had been knocked out of us. We wanted to scream and cry, but we had no air,” the couple wrote in a statement approved by their lawyer. “Raising a transgender child in Texas has been one long political emergency.”

Briggle said she learned of the investigation February 28, when she found a sticky note on her desk at the massage studio she owns saying she had missed an urgent private call. She assumed it was from another parent of a trans kid looking for advice. When she called the number, the woman on the line informed her that she was a Child Protective Services investigator, and she was 30 minutes away from the Briggle home.

The next 30 minutes went by in a blur, Briggle said. She managed to reach Adam, and they got family attorney Ian Pittman on the phone. They convinced the investigator to meet them at Briggle’s office. She would schedule another meeting for that Wednesday at the house.

“We told the children that they have the right to not answer questions,” the couple wrote in a statement. “We told them that the government is trying to spy on us even though we have done nothing wrong.”

[…]

In the meantime, families like the Briggles have been working feverishly to secure attorneys who will work pro bono, testimonials from friends and family, and home studies for a “safe folder,” an emergency packet of documents to demonstrate their parenting skills. The Briggles have filed a federal complaint against the state, Adam Briggle said.

“The Texas government has launched an effort to round up transgender children and send them off to a broken, overcrowded, and dysfunctional foster care system,” the Briggles wrote.

Last year, the legislature failed to pass a bill that would have labeled gender-affirming medical care as child abuse. Briggle testified against that bill. The couples say their family has been the subject of death threats and harassment ever since.

The family is terrified of speaking up about the investigation now, they said. But the couple is prepared to flee the state, and they worry that if no parents speak up, other trans kids will also face removal.

Adam is a tenured professor. Briggle owns a business. Both kids have a lot of friends. Leaving Texas would destroy their lives, they said.

“I really think that we need to start a contingency plan of that nature,” Adam said.

“If we have to become political refugees in our own country, then that’s what we do,” Briggle added. “But I don’t know where it’s safe.”

I wrote about the Paxtons’ dinner with the Briggles at the time. I did not believe that the Briggles’ generosity would have any effect on the Paxtons, and I’m sad to have been right about that. I can’t imagine what the Briggle family is going through right now. Just seeing them talk about the possibility of leaving the state is breathtaking, given that Amber Briggle was saying this on the same day that story was published:

.
Yall MY GOD stop telling us to move. ENOUGH. Our civil rights should be the same regardless of our zip code.

In the words of @ZelenskyyUa: “I need your support. Not a ride.”

Get to work.

#ProtectTransKids #doodlebug

— Amber Briggle (she/her) (@mrsbriggle) 8:12 PM – 8 March 2022

Whatever the Briggles decide to do, they’re not the only parents who are thinking of fleeing. I can’t even type things like that without wanting to scream. If we’re lucky, there will be a statewide injunction against this cruel policy as soon as today. But that will be appealed, and who knows what happens after that. We also know that losing in court is not going to stop the Republicans, who are all in on hating transgender people now. I’ve said it many times, they’re going to have to lose elections over this. Like, a lot of elections. That’s not going to be easy. The Briggle family is out there doing their part. We all have to do ours.

This is a good start, if a belated one.

Sixty-five major U.S. companies who do business in Texas are calling on Gov. Greg Abbott to reverse his order requiring the state’s child welfare agency to investigate gender-affirming care for transgender youth as a form of child abuse by their parents.

The companies, including Apple, Dow, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Meta and PayPal, in conjunction with the LGBT advocacy nonprofit Human Rights Campaign took out full-page print and digital advertisements in the Dallas Morning News that state in all capital, bold letters: “Discrimination is bad for business.”

“The recent attempt to criminalize a parent for helping their transgender child access medically necessary, age-appropriate health care in the state of Texas goes against the values of our companies,” they wrote. “This policy creates fear for employees and their families, especially those with transgender children, who might now be faced with choosing to provide the best possible medical care for their children but risk having those children removed by child protective services for doing so.”

So far, there are nine new CPS investigations statewide involving parents who are supporting their children’s medical care, said Patrick Crimmins, spokesperson for the state Department of Families and Protective Services. But advocates and lawyers say even just the fear of an investigation is putting immense stress on Texas families with transgender children.

Good for them, but there are a lot more companies that do business in Texas. Where are they? As that Trib story I linked to above points out, the Republican animosity towards the transgender community (as well as some other social issues) has caused a rift between them and their longtime benefactors in the business world, because they care about homophobia and transphobia and “critical race theory” and voter suppression so much more. When is the business community going to recognize this and start acting accordingly?

As a reminder, this is the system that Abbott and Paxton want to put these children into.

Employees at a state-contracted foster care facility established to help female victims of sex trafficking were instead trafficking the children staying there, state officials said Thursday.

The Bastrop operation, called The Refuge, has served 11 children ages 11 to 17. State officials began receiving reports of sexual abuse at the facility in late January, when a staffer alleged that a former employee had sold nude photos of two young girls and used the money to purchase illegal drugs and alcohol for them.

More accusations were made in the following weeks, and state investigators discovered that several staffers still employed at The Refuge were involved in the criminal activity. In total, there are seven alleged victims and nine alleged perpetrators, state officials said at an emergency court hearing Thursday afternoon.

All of the children were finally removed from the facility on Wednesday. One staff member has been arrested, and additional criminal charges are expected, officials said.

“The most appalling thing about this is the disregard of these children and you had to wait to get eight calls before you took 11 female already-trafficked children out of this trafficking situation,” said U.S. District Judge Janis Jack, who has overseen a decade-long lawsuit over the state’s foster care conditions. “This is a system that remains broken.”

The matter came to light Thursday, after the state Department of Family and Protective Services notified court-appointed monitors of the “urgent situation” at The Refuge. Jack blasted state officials for withholding the information from the monitors for several weeks, and for failing to remove the children after the first reports of abuse.

Emphasis mine. Such a commitment to “protecting” children Abbott and Paxton have. Maybe this should be a bigger story? I’m just saying. The Trib has more.

One more thing:

My family has personal experience with evidence-based gender-affirming health care at Texas Children’s Hospital. An amazing team of professionals lovingly guided us through a process that involved months of discernment with an incredible array of best-in-the-world physicians, social workers and mental health professionals. And our child’s quality of life immediately improved. Everything we did was medically necessary. We cannot imagine the devastation we would feel at being told “our lawyers say we cannot provide the medically necessary health care you desperately need.”

Last week, Texas Children’s announced that it would halt gender-affirming procedures. The hospital leaders should know that this is exactly the result Rep. Matt Krause, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott hoped would occur with their thinly-veiled circumvention of the democratic process: chaos and fearful reactions.

[…]

Abbott not only used Paxton’s legal opinion but misrepresented it to instruct the state to investigate families. In his letter to Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Jaime Masters, Abbott states that the attorney general determined that the gender-affirming health care procedures about which Krause inquired “constitute child abuse under existing Texas law.” Abbott completely ignored the express limitations in Paxton’s opinion. As a former Texas attorney general himself and a former justice on the Texas Supreme Court, it is fair to assume Abbott understands the difference. Frankly, the sheer political expedience of his actions seriously endangering the lives of the very children he should be protecting is beyond reprehensible — it is diabolical.

Finally, the simple truth is that Texas Children’s Hospital has allowed the Abbott/Paxton scheme to work by failing to stand up for the right of physicians (not politicians) to determine the medical standards of care for transgender youth. The hospital explanation was that it made the decision to halt care “to safeguard our healthcare professionals and impacted families from potential criminal legal ramifications.” While it is wrong for politicians in Austin to decide what the medical standard of care should be, it is also wrong for lawyers rather than physicians at the leading clinical and teaching children’s hospital in the world — located in the Texas Medical Center of Houston, literally the apex of medicine — to determine standards of medical care.

More importantly, the hospital has missed this opportunity to stand up for their patients. The hospital has left families like ours out in the cold and dashed the hopes of transgender kids just wanting to be their authentic selves.

Instead of using lawyers to dictate medical standards of care, put them to use in the legal arena fighting for medical independence of physicians and the rights of your patients. Don’t succumb, fight back. File a petition in intervention or an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal. Show up. Be courageous. Make the voices of the best medical experts in the world heard on these issues. Your silence is deafening.

See here for the background. Whether we get that statewide injunction or not, I agree with this. Texas Children’s Hospital, the other hospitals that have halted gender affirming care, the physicians who treat trans kids, the Texas Medical Association, all of them and more should be doing their part to fight back. If not now, then when?

Appeals court denies Paxton appeal of gender affirming care order

Mar 10th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Good.

A Texas appeals court sided with the parents of a transgender teenager in a ruling Wednesday, rejecting Attorney General Ken Paxton’s efforts to allow a child abuse investigation to proceed.

The ruling will allow a lower court to hold a hearing, scheduled for Friday, where lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal will ask a judge to stop the state from launching child abuse investigations against parents who have obtained gender-affirming care for their transgender children.

“This crisis in Texas is continuing every day, with state leaders weaponizing the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate families, invade their privacy, and trample on the rights of parents simply for providing the best possible health care for their kids under the guidance of doctors and medical best practices. This appeal was always groundless and DFPS and the courts need to stop this egregious government overreach,” said Brian Klosterboer, an attorney with ACLU of Texas.

[…]

The state has opened at least five child welfare investigations into parents of trans children since Abbott issued his directive on Feb. 22, though the real number may be much higher. The state has declined to provide the number of active investigations, citing the pending litigation.

The ACLU and Lambda Legal have sued on behalf of a state worker who has a trans child and alleges she was put on leave and investigated by CPS after asking questions about the directive.

Last week, state District Judge Amy Clark Meachum granted a temporary restraining order blocking the state from investigating the family. Paxton immediately appealed that ruling, and on Wednesday, the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to proceed.

Meachum also scheduled a hearing for Friday to hear arguments on whether to grant a temporary injunction until trial, and whether it should extend to all parents of transgender children.

See here and here for the background. I found a copy of the opinion here – it either wasn’t findable on the Third Court of Appeals website or they just didn’t have it loaded yet. The case information is here. This was a wonky and technical matter of whether the state could appeal a temporary restraining order at this time – you can just skim it to get the gist. Among other things, it means that if Judge Meachum does issue a statewide injunction following the Friday hearing, this will get appealed again, and I imagine it will be on an express lane to the Supreme Court. How it all might go is anyone’s guess. For now at least, this family has a bit of relief, and I hope every other family in that same terrible position will get the same soon.

Paxton appeals gender affirming care order

Mar 5th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Of course he did.

Attorney General Ken Paxton filed for an appeal Thursday after a state judge blocked Texas’ child protection agency from investigating the parents of a transgender teenager who received gender-affirming medical care.

District Judge Amy Clark Meachum had granted a temporary restraining order on Wednesday. It did not stop the agency from opening investigations into other families in similar situations.

Meachum was scheduled to consider issuing a statewide injunction blocking such investigations into all parents of trans children on March 11, but that hearing has been put on hold until an appeals court rules on Paxton’s request.

And U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said his agency is looking into tools that would shield transgender Texans from the state’s attempts to hinder access to gender-affirming care.

“The Texas government’s attacks against transgender youth and those who love and care for them are discriminatory and unconscionable,” he said. “These actions are clearly dangerous to the health of transgender youth in Texas.”

[…]

Becerra released guidance Wednesday that says refusing health care because of gender identity is illegal and that health care providers are not required to disclose information regarding gender-affirming care.

President Joe Biden also released a statement Wednesday condemning Texas’ actions.

“This is government overreach at its worst,” Biden said in a statement. “Like so many anti-transgender attacks proliferating in states across the country, the Governor’s actions callously threaten to harm children and their families just to score political points. These actions are terrifying many families in Texas and beyond. And they must stop.”

See here for the background. This is primarily about preventing Judge Meachum from being able to issue a statewide injunction, since the hearing for that action is on hold pending the appeal. The Third Court is more likely than not to deny Paxton’s appeal, but then he’ll go to the Supreme Court, and who knows how long that could take. And delay is good enough for Paxton and Abbott and their wicked aims.

Texas Children’s Hospital has “paused” hormone-related prescription therapies for gender-affirming care in response to the controversial directive from state leaders to investigate medical treatments for transgender youth as child abuse, according to a statement from the hospital.

“The mission of Texas Children’s Hospital is to create a healthier future for all children, including transgender children, within the bounds of the law,” the statement reads. “After assessing the Attorney General’s and Governor’s actions, Texas Children’s Hospital paused hormone-related prescription therapies for gender-affirming services. This step was taken to safeguard our healthcare professionals and impacted families from potential criminal legal ramifications.”

[…]

Lou Weaver, a transgender man and community advocate for transgender children and adults, said very few facilities offer gender-affirming care for children, and Texas Children’s is among the biggest programs in Texas that offered it.

“This is a truly frightening time for trans youth and their parents and guardians,” he said. “The doors to life-saving health care are literally being shut in their faces.”

UT Southwestern’s children’s hospital in Dallas shut down services for new patients at the end of the last legislative session due to political pressure, Weaver said.

I can’t blame Texas Children’s for not wanting to risk the legal exposure, but this is truly harmful and there’s not a clear endpoint. That harm is also financial for the families involved. I don’t know what the feds can do, but they need to figure it out quickly.

And in what may be the most infuriating but least surprising part of this, the opinion Paxton issued was based on misreading studies and making false claims.

One researcher said Paxton distorted her work for political purposes and that she’s “mortified” her research was included in the opinion.

Alexandra Minna Stern, a professor of history at the University of Michigan, studies the history of forced sterilization in the United States. Paxton’s office drew a parallel between forced sterilization and gender affirmation surgeries for minors. “I’m adamantly opposed to this interpretation and it does not align with my research and the conclusions of my research,” she said.

“If they knew anything about my scholarship more generally, they would know that I am someone whose research demonstrates the harm of the very types of policies they’re trying to enact on marginalized people.”

[…]

In his opinion, Paxton cited the work of Dr. Cecilia Dhejne, a Stockholm-based researcher, to support the idea that gender-affirming health care could be harmful to transgender children.

Dhejne led a 2011 study that found that transgender people who have undergone gender-affirmation surgery have worse mental health outcomes than the general population. Dhejne did not respond to a request for comment. However, in the text of the 2011 study, Dhejne and her team caution specifically against using the study to conclude that gender-affirming surgery is problematic, noting that the study did not compare the mental health outcomes of people before and after gender-affirming surgery.

The study’s “results should not be interpreted such as sex reassignment per se increases morbidity and mortality. Things might have been even worse without sex reassignment,” the study says.

Dhejne and her colleagues wrote instead that the study shows a need for better support for transgender people after they undergo surgery.

Paxton also asserts that there has been a recent “spike” in minors receiving gender-affirming “procedures.” He cited the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine, an anti-trans advocacy group.

The link in Paxton’s citation leads to a graph showing an increase in youth referrals to the United Kingdom’s Gender Identity Development Service. That national clinic provides a range of care, including counseling; the number of clinic referrals is not necessarily the number of medical interventions like the legal opinion implies.

Similarly, Paxton’s opinion cited the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and said that transgender people should typically be adults before receiving the listed types of gender-affirming care.

In a statement to the Star-Telegram, WPATH said that Paxton applied the citation too broadly. While WPATH does state in its standards of care that genital surgery should typically wait until a transgender person reaches the age of majority, Paxton’s opinion applied that standard to less-invasive interventions, too, including puberty blockers.

“It’s disheartening to see the Texas Attorney General’s opinion referencing WPATH to bolster an overall argument completely at odds with WPATH guidance,” the organization said in a written statement. “The citation is accurate but does not apply here because the AG’s opinion is arguing against reversible blockers while the cited WPATH content relates to gender affirming surgery.”

There’s a lot more and you should read the rest, but you get the idea. Lying has never bothered Ken Paxton. It’s serving him pretty well right now. The Statesman has more.

Investigation into trans teen’s family halted

Mar 3rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

It’s a start.

A state judge blocked Texas’ child protection agency from investigating the parents of a transgender teenager who received gender-affirming medical care, citing the “irreparable injury” they would likely suffer. District Judge Amy Clark Meachum’s ruling does not stop the agency from opening investigations into other families in similar situations.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal brought a lawsuit challenging these investigations on behalf of a state employee, her husband and their 16-year-old who received gender-affirming treatment, plus Dr. Megan Mooney, a psychologist who works with trans teenagers.

Meachum will consider issuing a statewide injunction blocking such investigations into all parents of trans children on March 11.

“We appreciate the relief granted to our clients, but this should never have happened and is unfathomably cruel,” Brian Klosterboer, an attorney with ACLU of Texas, said in a statement. “Families should not have to fear being separated because they are providing the best possible health care for their children.”

[…]

Lambda Legal lawyer Paul Castillo said he was aware of at least two other families, beyond the Does, who have been contacted by DFPS for investigations. And the chilling effect for parents of trans children has been immense, he said.

“Families aside from [those investigated] will cease care,” he said. “As a result of this order … medical providers have stopped care in terms of prescriptions to transgender kids because the threat of continuing to provide, the harm is so great.”

In Wednesday’s hearing, a lawyer for the state argued that the governor’s letter has been misconstrued to imply that all parents who provide gender-affirming care would be investigated by DFPS.

The opinion from the attorney general was intended to show “not that gender-affirming treatments are necessarily or per se abusive, but that these treatments, like virtually any other implement, could be used by somebody to harm a child,” Assistant Attorney General Ryan Kercher said.

Kercher argued that Abbott’s letter was merely clarifying a “concern” that gender-affirming treatments could never be considered child abuse.

Meachum challenged that argument, asking how common it is for the governor to issue directives like this to DFPS. Kercher said he did not know.

See here, here, and here for the background. A copy of the order is here and the ACLU’s statement is here. The state’s argument that people have “misconstrued” Abbott’s order is one part baffling, one part brazen bullshit, and one part maybe a bit of backpedaling. I get the impression they really didn’t have an argument and so went for the “that’s not what I meant” defense. Let’s just cut to the part where the judge issues the injunction, shall we?

Lawsuit filed to block investigation of gender-affirming care for trans teenager

Mar 2nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

This was inevitable. I very much hope it is successful.

The state of Texas is investigating a family for child abuse after the parents obtained gender-affirming care for their 16-year-old transgender daughter. It’s believed to be among the first of these probes since the governor directed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to target such care a week ago.

The child’s mother — a DFPS employee who reviews cases of abuse and neglect — has been placed on leave after asking for clarification from her supervisor about the recent executive branch orders.

The investigation came to light on Tuesday — the day of the Texas primary elections — in a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal filed in Austin on the family’s behalf to block investigations of families seeking such medical care for their children.

The suit names both Gov. Greg Abbott and the Department of Family and Protective Services as defendants.

“No family should have to fear being torn apart because they are supporting their trans child,” Adri Pérez, a policy and advocacy strategist at the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement. “A week before an election, Gov. Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a partisan political attack that isn’t rooted in the needs of families, the evidence from doctors and the expertise from child welfare professionals.”

The action is the first legal challenge in response to Abbott’s directive last week to child welfare officials to investigate parents of transgender children for child abuse. The order came within days after an opinion issued by Paxton, which classified certain types of gender-affirming care as child abuse.

[…]

Last week, the agency confirmed that three reports of transgender children receiving gender-affirming care were made through the child abuse reporting system. On Tuesday, the agency declined further comment other than to say it was aware of the ACLU suit. The governor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the lawsuit.

The teenager’s family is not named. The lawsuit instead refers to the parents as Jane and John Doe and the daughter as Mary Doe. When an investigator visited the family’s home last Friday, they interviewed the parents and the child, the lawsuit states. The family has so far refused to hand over the girl’s medical records to the agency.

If the agency determines the family has committed child abuse, the parents would be placed on a child abuse registry and the mother could be fired, according to the suit.

The mother said in the lawsuit that she and her husband have “been unable to sleep, worrying about what they can do and how they can keep their family intact and their daughter safe and healthy.”

Houston-based clinical psychologist Megan Mooney is also named as a plaintiff. Mooney is now required by state law to report her clients receiving gender-affirming care, but she stated in the suit that complying with the governor’s directive raised ethical concerns.

See here and here for the background. The ACLU’s press release, which contains a link to the complaint, is here. You might give a listen to Tuesday’s What Next podcast, which explored this terrible action by Abbott and Paxton and the effect it is already having on people, including children, who have done absolutely nothing wrong. This is happening now. It’s hard for me to even form sentences about this without wanting to scream, so please use this as some extra motivation to vote these awful people out of office this November. We may win this in court, but as long as these assholes have power, this will continue and it will get worse. The Chron has more.

Voting Rights Groups Sue Texas for Failure to Disclose Records Related to Voter Purges

Feb 3rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

From the inbox:

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

The Campaign Legal Center (CLC), the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Texas, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and DĒMOS filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas to order Texas’ Secretary of State to produce records responsive to their previous requests seeking information about a state program that threatens to remove naturalized citizens from the voter rolls.

On August 20, 2021, the Office of the Attorney General of Texas sent a letter today stating that Secretary John Scott’s office had initiated a process to identify alleged non-U.S. citizens on the voter rolls and send the identified registrants’ information to county election administrators to either verify their citizenship status or cancel their voter registration. Scott’s office has identified thousands of registrants for potential removal under this program. Soon after the program was initiated, local registrars quickly identified many of these individuals as naturalized citizens whose registration should not be in doubt. Recent reporting suggests that the Secretary’s program sweeps too broadly and endangers the registrations of thousands of eligible citizens.

In August and October 2021, CLC, ACLU of Texas, MALDEF, Lawyers’ Committee and DĒMOS submitted records requests to Secretary Scott for records related to the new voter purge program and the data the Secretary of State relied on to determine each voter’s citizenship status. Under the National Voter Registration Act, the Secretary of State is required to keep this data and disclose it upon request. However, Texas has so far failed to produce any records.

“The right to vote is what makes this country a free one and naturalized citizens in Texas, and every U.S. state, should not have to worry about being purged from the voting rolls. We all deserve the chance to cast our ballots freely, safely and equally,” said Paul Smith, senior vice president at Campaign Legal Center. “Sadly, it is clear that the court now needs to step in and protect that freedom by compelling the state to produce the records for this program—thereby making our elections safe, accessible and transparent.”

“Texas can’t shirk its obligations under federal law to release information about its new voter purge program,” said Ashley Harris, attorney at the ACLU of Texas. “The public deserves to know why Texas continues to falsely flag U.S. citizens for removal from the voter rolls.”

“The Secretary of State’s voter purge program once again surgically targets naturalized U.S. citizens for investigation and removal from the voter rolls,” stated Nina Perales, MALDEF Vice President of Litigation. “Naturalized U.S. citizens have the same right to vote as all other citizens, and this new lawsuit seeks to ensure that Texas treats its voters fairly.”

“It seems that Texas is incapable – or worse, unwilling – to learn from the past. Racial and ethnic discrimination in voting has been a sad part of Texas’s history continuing in the present. And discriminating against naturalized citizens falls into this unfortunate pattern,” commented Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the Voting Rights Project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “We need to shed light on precisely how Texas is identifying voters it wants to purge from the rolls in order to ensure that the precious right to vote is not snatched from eligible voters, whose only ‘crime’ is that they are naturalized and not native-born citizens.”

“This effort to block Black and brown Texans’ access to the ballot is part of a larger, nationwide effort to dismantle the fundamentals of our democracy. Naturalized citizens who are registered to vote have every right to have their voices heard in every election,” said Brenda Wright, Senior Advisor for Legal Strategies at Demos. “The state owes the people of Texas transparency regarding its voter purge practices to ensure fairness and confidence in the democratic process.”

In 2019, CLC, ACLU Texas, MALDEF, Lawyers’ Committee, and DĒMOS all represented clients suing Texas’ former Secretary of State for inaccurately flagging tens of thousands of naturalized U.S. citizen registered voters as non-U.S. citizens. After a district court found the program likely unlawful, Texas entered into a settlement agreement to reform its flawed voter purge program. But the reintroduction of this program has been riddled with reported errors. While the state claims to be applying the procedures outlined in that settlement agreement, Secretary Scott’s refusal to turn over basic information has made this difficult to verify.

Early indicators show that the state may not be following the procedure outlined, leading voters to be inaccurately flagged as non-U.S. citizens. According to public statements from the Texas Secretary of State’s office, 2,327 of the over 11,000 registered voters flagged as being potential non-U.S. citizens have had their voter registrations canceled. Yet, the state has only confirmed that 278—approximately 2%—of the voters flagged are non-U.S. citizens.

The court must ensure that the state produces lists of every registered voter identified under its new voter deletion program as a potential non-U.S. citizen and the data the Secretary of State relied on to flag individuals as potential non-U.S. citizens. This will enable good government and civil rights groups to continue to protect Texans’ freedom to vote, ensure that their voices are heard and guarantee that the state’s elections are safe and accessible for all.

A copy of the complaint is available here: https://www.aclutx.org/sites/default/files/tx_nvra_complaint_.pdf

See here and here for the most recent chapters in this long story. Raise your hand if you’re even a little bit surprised that the state of Texas has been less than forthcoming with its data. It’s annoying as hell that all this work needs to be done for this very basic function of our government, and I’m grateful to the groups that are doing it. The Dallas Observer has more.

The botched “non-citizen” voter purge continues

Dec 21st, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

At some point we need to recognize the fact that our Secretary of State’s office is completely, and maybe maliciously, inept at doing this.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Texas’ last attempt to scour its voting rolls for noncitizens two years ago quickly devolved into a calamity.

The state flagged nearly 100,000 voters for citizenship checks and set them up for possible criminal investigation based on flawed data that didn’t account for immigrants who gained citizenship. After it became clear it was jeopardizing legitimate voter registrations, it was pulled into three federal lawsuits challenging its process. Former Secretary of State David Whitley lost his job amid the fallout. And the court battle ultimately forced the state to abandon the effort and rethink its approach to ensure naturalized citizens weren’t targeted.

This fall, the state began rolling out a new, scaled-down approach. But again, the county officials responsible for carrying it out are encountering what appear to be faults in the system.

Scores of citizens are still being marked for review — and possible removal from the rolls. Registrars in some of the state’s largest counties have found that a sizable number of voters labeled possible noncitizens actually filled out their voter registration cards at their naturalization ceremonies. In at least a few cases, the state flagged voters who were born in the U.S.

The secretary of state’s office says it is following the settlement agreement it entered in 2019 — an arrangement that limited its screening of voters to those who registered to vote and later indicated to the Texas Department of Public Safety that they are not citizens. Flagged voters can provide documentation of their citizenship in order to keep their registrations, officials have pointed out.

But the issues tied to the new effort are significant enough that they’ve renewed worries among the civil rights groups that forced the state to change its practices. They are questioning Texas’ compliance with the legal settlement that halted the last review. And for some attorneys, the persisting problems underscore their concerns that the state is needlessly putting the registrations of eligible voters at risk.

“We’re trying to get a grasp of the scale, but obviously there’s still a problem, which I think we always said would be the case,” said Joaquin Gonzalez, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, which was involved in the 2019 litigation. “It’s definitely something we were concerned would happen if they tried to restart this process.”

[…]

Texas’ voter citizenship review has persisted through the tenure of multiple secretaries of state and has been backed by state Republican leaders who have touted the broader review effort as a way to ensure the integrity of the voter rolls, though there is no evidence that large numbers of noncitizens are registered to vote.

The current iteration was formally initiated in early September before the appointment of the state’s new secretary of state, John Scott, who helped former President Donald Trump challenge the 2020 presidential election results in Pennsylvania.

That’s when the state sent counties 11,737 records of registered voters who were deemed “possible non-U.S. citizens.” It was a much smaller list than the one it produced in 2019, when it did not account for people who became naturalized citizens in between renewing driver’s licenses or ID cards they initially obtained as noncitizens.

But when Bexar County received its list of 641 flagged voters, county workers quickly determined that 109 of them — 17% of the total — had actually registered at naturalization ceremonies. The county is able to track the origin of those applications because of an internal labeling system it made up years ago when staff began attending the ceremonies, said Jacque Callanen, the county’s administrator.

Election officials in Travis County said they were similarly able to identify that applications for 60 voters on the county’s list of 408 flagged voters — roughly 15% of the total — had been filled out at naturalization ceremonies.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, another group that sued the state in 2019, is still assessing the extent to which the state’s new attempt to review the rolls may be defective. But those figures alone should give everyone pause, ACLU staff attorney Thomas Buser-Clancy said after The Texas Tribune provided him those tallies.

“What we do know is that every time the secretary of state tries to do something like this it fails and that these efforts, which inevitably ensnare eligible voters, should not be happening,” Buser-Clancy said.

In an advisory announcing the revised process, the secretary of state’s office told counties that they should first attempt to “investigate” a voter’s eligibility. If they are unable to verify citizenship, the county must then send out “notices of examination” that start a 30-day clock for the voter to submit proof of citizenship to retain their registration. Voters who don’t respond with proof within 30 days are removed from the rolls — though they can be reinstated if they later prove their citizenship, including at a polling place.

Beyond the figures from Bexar and Travis counties, local election officials in other counties, including Cameron and Williamson, confirmed they’ve heard back from flagged voters who are naturalized citizens. After mailing 2,796 notices, officials in Harris County said 167 voters had provided them with documentation proving their citizenship. In Fort Bend, officials received proof of citizenship from at least 87 voters on their list of 515 “possible noncitizens.” Last week, Texas Monthly reported on two cases of citizens in Cameron County who were flagged as possible noncitizens.

See here, here, and here for not nearly enough background on this. The simple fact is that if the SOS process is generating such high error rates, especially for things that should be easily checked and thus avoided, the process itself is clearly and fatally flawed. Some of this is because, as anyone who works with databases can tell you, data is hard and messy and it’s easy to make mistakes when trying to figure out if two different text values are actually the same thing. And some of it is clearly because the SOS and the Republicans pushing this don’t care at all if there’s some collateral damage. That’s a feature and not a bug to them. If it’s not time to go back to the courts and get another stick to whack them with, it will be soon. Reform Austin has more.

Crystal Mason using SB1 to try to overturn her illegal voting conviction

Dec 13th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Hope this works. It would be one small good thing to come out of that otherwise harmful law.

Crystal Mason, the Tarrant County woman whose illegal voting conviction has garnered national attention, is asking for a Texas appeals court to overturn her conviction under a new provision of Texas’ recently adopted election law Senate Bill 1.

Mason, 46, was sentenced to five years in prison for attempting to cast a ballot in 2016′s presidential election. At the time, Mason was on supervised release from a federal tax fraud conviction and was prohibited from voting in Texas.

Her lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union this week filed a brief with the Texas Court of Criminal of Appeals citing the state’s new election law that took effect earlier this month in asking for her conviction to be overturned.

Tucked within SB 1 that was passed by the Texas Legislature in this year’s second special session is a section erasing criminal penalties for felons who attempt to vote without knowing that they were committing a crime. That portion of the law came about with Mason’s conviction in mind.

“SB 1 is a repudiation of Ms. Mason’s conviction and five-year sentence of incarceration,” the brief states.

[…]

Her attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union declined a request for comment. The Tarrant County District Attorney’s office, which prosecuted and has argued against overturning Mason’s conviction, said in an emailed statement that SB 1 has no bearing on Mason’s case.

“Even under the new law, she is guilty,” office spokeswoman Anna Tinsley Williams said. “She wasn’t convicted simply for casting the provisional ballot; she was convicted for casting a provisional ballot when she knew she was ineligible to vote. Knowledge of ineligibility is the key. This is not a case of mistaken voting.”

See here and here for some background. House Democrats had negotiated an amendment in the original bill during the regular session that would have retroactively covered Mason’s case, but it was taken out in the conference committee version by Senators on the committee, and that breaking of the faith was one of the catalysts for the initial quorum break during the regular session, which prevented the bill from getting a final vote. In the second special session, after House Dems had returned from Washington, a similar amendment was added to the House version of the bill, but it again ran into resistance in the Senate, with bill author Bryan Hughes the main obstacle. (How bad does Hughes look when even Briscoe fricking Cain was willing to add this provision to the bill?) If people can read the final version of the bill to include or not include Crystal Mason in its scope, then it’s at best a tossup what the CCA will do, and given their usual pro-prosecution bias, I can’t say I’m optimistic. But it’s sure worth the try.

Redistricting litigation update

Nov 27th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Reform Austin shows that the state’s legal defense strategy against the various redistricting lawsuits is “You can’t sue us!”

Because of the clear racial gerrymandering, multiple groups are launching legal challenges under the Voting Rights Act. The state has now responded to the one being brought by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Mi Familia Vota, the Mexican American Bar Association, and others, asking for a dismissal. Among many other claims, the state alleges that private citizens do not have standing to sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

“The Supreme Court has never decided whether Section 2 contains an implied private cause of action,” reads the filing.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act makes it illegal to gerrymander a district for the purpose of suppressing voting power based on race. Strictly political gerrymandering was deemed acceptable in a 2019 Supreme Court case, but the two intentions are often intermingled. The majority of minorities tend to vote Democrat, making any political gerrymandering also racial almost by definition.

The filing by the state does admit that some legal opinions have implied that Section 2 does give private citizens standing to sue but says that these implications are inconsistent with other Supreme Court decisions. The case specifically cited is Alexander vs. Sandoval, which found that regulations enacted under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not confer the right to legal action in a case of non-intentional discrimination. The filing also claims that the Voting Rights Act did not actually create a right to vote in spite of the discrimination, and therefor there is no right to be contested under its statute.

Not a whole lot to say here, as Texas has employed a variation on that strategy in a whole host of lawsuit defenses lately. I don’t know what the district and appeals courts will make of that, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it get a warm welcome at SCOTUS. Hey, have I mentioned lately that a new and updated federal voting rights law would be a good idea? Just checking.

Reading that article made me go Google news hunting for anything else I could find on redistricting litigation, since not all developments make their way into the sources I read regularly. In doing so I found that all but one of the existing federal cases against the redistricting maps have been consolidated into one, the LULAC v Texas case, as it was the first one filed. You can see all of the filings related to this omnibus case here. When I read the order combining the cases, the motion for which had been partially opposed, I learned that there were two other lawsuits that I had missed the first time around. Let me sum up here. The cases that I knew about that are now under this banner: The LULAC/MALDEF suit, the Voto Latino suit, the federal MALC suit, the Senator Powell lawsuit over SD10, and the Fair Maps Texas Action Committee lawsuit.

The cases that I missed the first time around: The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, representing the Texas State Conference of the NAACP, and Damon James Wilson, formerly an inmate in Dallas County, representing himself as he was counted in one Congressional district while incarcerated but intends to return to his actual domicile in another CD when released, and says he should have been counted in that district.

The one federal case that remains separate from the others is the Gutierrez/Eckhardt suit, which the court rejected for consolidation on the grounds that about whether the Lege was allowed to draw maps at all, and not about the composition of the new maps.

So, for those of you keeping score at home, we now have two federal lawsuits challenging different aspects of Texas redistricting, and one state lawsuit that focuses on the county line rule and how it was allegedly violated in Cameron County in the drawing on HDs 35 and 37. You’ll be quizzed on this at a later date, so please make sure you take good notes.

ACLU and others sue over new redistricting maps

Nov 19th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

The count is now seven.

Civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging new Texas state legislative and congressional district plans as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders violating both the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. The suit details an inadequate redistricting process that lacked transparency and led to discriminatory voting maps that dilute the political power of communities of color, particularly Black, Latino, and Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), brought the case on behalf of the Fair Maps Texas Action Committee, OCA-Greater Houston, the North Texas Chapter of the Asian Pacific Islander Americans Public Affairs Association, Emgage and 13 individual plaintiffs in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division.

“Texas’ latest gerrymanders seek to blunt the rightful political power of fast-growing populations of Latino, Black and Asian American and Pacific Islanders voters by carving up the chance to elect their preferred candidates to the United States Congress, the Texas House of Representatives, and the Texas Senate,” Allison Riggs, Co-Executive Director and Chief Counsel for Voting Rights with SCSJ. “This intentional discrimination of voters of color in clear violation of the VRA and U.S. Constitution cannot stand.”

The Fair Maps Texas Action Committee includes the ACLU of Texas, Clean Elections Texas, League of Women Voters of Texas, Our Vote Texas, National Council of Jewish Women-Greater Dallas Section, Texans Against Gerrymandering, and Common Cause Texas.

“Today, the Fair Maps Texas Action Committee is honored to join our partners from across the state to challenge the unconstitutional district maps recently passed by the State of Texas. Lawmakers have willfully ignored the rich diversity of our growing state and have instead chosen to draw maps that discriminate against voters of color,” said organizations from the Fair Maps Texas Action Committee in a joint statement today. “From the very start of this legislative process, we worked to bring diverse people together so that all marginalized communities receive fair representation. Despite our best efforts to advocate for a fair and open redistricting process, the politicians in charge chose to shut the public out in order to force through blatantly gerrymandered maps. Now, we will take action together to challenge these unlawful maps because our democracy is threatened.”

[…]

The complaint specifically seeks to remedy discriminatory districts in many of Texas’ fastest-growing cities and suburban areas, where the political power of communities of color is exploited to the benefit of more conservative white areas. For example, the lawsuit identifies how Texas’ state House maps unfairly crack AAPI voters in Fort Bend and Collin counties among multiple districts, while House Districts 54 and 55 in Bell County brazenly split the city of Killeen, where 40% of residents are Black. The complaint also focuses on state Senate and congressional maps where new districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston metros intentionally divide AAPI, Black, and Latino voters. The suit also points out that Texas’ congressional maps create two new majority-white districts in a state where 95% of population growth stems from communities of color.

That’s from the ACLU press release. I’d gotten an email with a notice of the video conference they had about this on Tuesday, but as of Wednesday the only news story I saw about this was this one in Newsweek. Sometimes these things take a couple of days for that. Anyway, you can see a copy of the complaint here. It is limited to Congress and the two legislative chambers, so no claims about the SBOE.

The other litigation so far includes the Gutierrez/Eckhardt suit, the LULAC/MALDEF suit, the Voto Latino suit, the two MALC suits, and most recently the Senator Powell lawsuit over SD10. All but one of the MALC lawsuits, which is specifically about State House districts in Cameron County and alleges a violation of the county rule, are in federal court. I believe this is the first one to include a focus on Asian-American voters, but I’d have to go back and take a closer look at the other complaints. Beyond that, I would be really excited to have an attorney who has some familiarity with the law in this area take a look at all these actions and tell me how they are different and whether any of it matters as far as the courts are concerned. Until then, this is what we know. Reform Austin, which also rounds up all the lawsuits, has more.

ACLU of Texas

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