Joint Statement on Ruling from Texas Supreme Court

CONTACT:
Kristi Gross, ACLU of Texas, [email protected]
Tom Warnke, Lambda Legal, [email protected]

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Supreme Court today issued a ruling in Doe v. Abbott and PFLAG v. Abbott, challenging the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services’ mandate to investigate families with transgender children. Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, and PFLAG issued the following statement:

“For more than four years, we successfully blocked DFPS from investigating Texas families based on allegations that they were providing gender affirming medical care to their transgender adolescents. Today, the Texas Supreme Court issued a purely procedural ruling vacating those injunctions—not because DFPS’s rule requiring these investigations is lawful but because the individual plaintiffs who brought these cases no longer need the injunctions. The Court held that their claims are moot either because DFPS has closed their investigations and has testified that they will not reopen them or because the young people involved are no longer minors and thus DFPS no longer has the authority to investigate their parents.

“DFPS argued to the Court that, given that gender affirming medical care is no longer lawfully provided to minors in Texas, there is no reason for DFPS to conduct future investigations. We will hold them to that. Any family that is contacted by DFPS related to gender affirming medical care should contact the Lambda Legal Help Desk.”