Ximena Lopez

More good news.

A Dallas County judge has granted a nearly one-year injunction against Children’s Medical Center Dallas that will allow doctors there to continue intake of transgender youth seeking certain medical treatments.

Judge Melissa Bellan signed a temporary injunction Monday that lasts until next April, replacing a two-week temporary restraining order granted May 12. Requested by Dr. Ximena Lopez, both the injunction and the restraining order halted the hospital’s recent decision to stop providing certain medical treatments, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, to new transgender patients while a court battle continues over whether to reverse the policy altogether.

It’s the latest legal win for Lopez, who led the Genecis program for transgender youth that Children’s ran jointly with UT Southwestern until last November. She started her court battles with the hospitals in March with the goal of restarting care for new patients.

The injunction was agreed upon by both Lopez and Children’s and will stay in place until a trial currently set for April 18, 2023. At that time, a judge will decide whether the injunction should be made permanent.

[…]

“Justice has been done for these patients and families. Life-saving care was taken away from them for no legitimate reason and with no reasonable alternative,” Lopez said in a statement to The Dallas Morning News. “It is unfair for patients and providers to have to go through litigation to fight for their right to receive and provide medical care, respectively.”

Children’s declined to comment on the injunction. UT Southwestern, which is also subject to the order, has not responded to a request for comment.

Lopez’s attorney, Charla Aldous, applauded the mutually-agreed-upon order.

“Even in litigation, there are times the parties can get together and do what’s right. And I’m thankful Children’s agreed to this extension, for the sake of families and children. It’s the right thing to do,” she said.

Attorney general Ken Paxton has asked the court to allow him to intervene on behalf of the state in Lopez’s legal battles with Children’s Medical Center Dallas. The judge has not responded to his request for intervention.

See here, here, here, and here for some background. I’m writing this just before Runoff Day results start coming in so I don’t have the usual brain space to think about it, but this is a good result. We’ll see what happens with the request to intervene. Kudos to Dr. Lopez for pressing the issue. The 19th has more.

This is what I was worried about.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants the state to intervene in a court battle over medical care for transgender youth at a Dallas hospital.

Paxton filed a petition in a Dallas County court Tuesday night asking that the state be allowed to get involved in the case between Children’s Medical Center Dallas and the doctor who once led its Genecis medical program. A judge recently granted Dr. Ximena Lopez’s request to temporarily resume her regular practice after Children’s and UT Southwestern, which jointly ran the program, last year stopped providing certain medical treatments for adolescent patients newly seeking care for gender dysphoria.

The attorney general is arguing that transgender adolescents should be blocked from accessing treatments such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, which he says may constitute abuse but which are broadly supported by the medical community.

“In order to protect its interest … in the welfare of children subject to this life-altering decision in the hands of a doctor, the state surely has a right to intervene in this matter,” Paxton and his top deputies wrote in their brief.

The brief didn’t offer a detailed explanation of how the state wants to affect the case. Neither Paxton nor Abbott responded to requests for comment.

Lopez’s legal team filed a response Wednesday evening, saying that the attorney general’s intervention is politically motivated. The team also filed an emergency motion to shorten the time before a temporary injunction hearing currently scheduled for May 26. The temporary injunction, if granted, could extend the pause on Children’s decision to stop providing certain care for new transgender adolescent patients.

[…]

“Through his filing, the attorney general is saying that he and the state should decide what is best for Texas children instead of their parents and chosen physicians,” Lopez’s attorney Charla Aldous said in a statement. “That’s a very dangerous path to follow when we’re talking about parents who are literally trying to secure lifesaving, internationally recognized standard-of-care treatment for their kids.”

See here, here, and here for some background. This is completely unsurprising, but hopefully the court will swat it aside. It would be nice if UT Southwestern took the position that this is just between them and the doctor and the state should butt out, but I doubt that will happen. I’ll keep an eye on this to see where it goes from here.

Some good news for transgender kids and their families.

A Dallas-based program that offers mental health services and hormone treatments to transgender children may resume the therapy for new patients for the first time since November, after a judge on Thursday temporarily cleared away legal barriers to the practice.

The program director, Dr. Ximena Lopez, had filed a lawsuit in March against Children’s Medical Center in Dallas for shutting down operations to new patients last fall at the GENder Education and Care, Interdisciplinary Support (GENECIS) program, which is housed at the hospital and run jointly by it and UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Thursday’s temporary restraining order banned those restrictions for the next two weeks, and within hours after the decision, five new patients had been scheduled at the center.

“It’s powerful,” said Dallas lawyer Charla Aldous, who represents Lopez. “This is going to affect the lives of children. It really is.”

The GENECIS center was formally dissolved in November, which meant that patients already enrolled in the program still had access to the hormone therapies, but that new patients had to be turned away for those services.

Since November, the clinic has had to turn away about 100 families with children who wanted to begin the treatment at the center, Aldous said. The center had also been told that starting next month, it would no longer be allowed to start gender-affirming hormone therapy for any patients, including those already being seen by mental health doctors there.

Another hearing is set for May 26 in Dallas County Court-at-Law Judge Melissa Bellan’s courtroom to determine the path forward for the clinic. The lawsuit demands the hospital allow clinic doctors to offer what they describe as lifesaving treatment to young people with gender dysphoria and similar issues.

The clinic does not offer surgical options or gender confirmation surgery for either children or adults. Under the gender-affirming model of care, more time is spent allowing kids to socially transition instead of focusing on medical treatment. A social transition consists of the steps a child takes to affirm their identity. An example could include allowing a child assigned male at birth to wear clothing, grow their hair or use a different name that better fits their identity.

GENECIS was dissolved after facing months of pressure by socially conservative political leaders and activists, who organized protests targeting hospital board members and accused the program of committing child abuse.

Bellan wrote in her Thursday order that Children’s Medical Center had violated the law by “interfering with, controlling, or otherwise directing any physician’s professional judgment” and by “discriminating against patients on the basis of the patient’s gender identity and directing (Lopez) to violate the law by discriminating against patients on the basis of a patient’s gender identity.”

The ruling barred Children’s Medical Center from prohibiting GENECIS doctors from restricting puberty blockers or hormone therapy to existing or new patients to treat gender dysphoria as part of gender-affirming care.

If the hearing in two weeks goes in their favor, Aldous plans to ask for an immediate ruling on the suit “to make this decision final.”

“Dr. Lopez is very relieved that she can now treat her patients in the manner in which she has been trained to do and what the standard of care requires,” Aldous said. “She’s thrilled with the court’s decision.”

See here and here for some background. Assuming the subsequent hearing gets the same result, the main question to me is whether there is an appeal, and if so by whom. I don’t think UT Southwestern would care to continue to fight this, but for sure there will be plenty of others who would. Would they be allowed to intervene, I wonder? You lawyers may feel free to speculate, the rest of us will have to wait and see.