Amidst an increase in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation this year, Texas’s recent effort has met pushback from both legal and corporate forces.
Florida’s passing of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill limiting school curriculums from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity earlier in March, a similar bill being introduced in Georgia, and Idaho’s Senate’s just recently killing HB 675, a bill with traction in the House banning gender-affirming surgeries and hormone therapies from being prescribed to minors, are only a few instances of a rise in similar laws brewing among several states including Oklahoma, Iowa, and Tennessee.
In February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton made a statement that hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgeries are considered child abuse, a sentiment carried forward by Governor Greg Abbott’s order for the Department of Family and Protective Services to thoroughly investigate any “reported instances of these abusive procedures in the State of Texas,” and for any mandated reporters such as teachers and healthcare professionals to report trans children receiving care.
While the order immediately met widespread protest, large portions of the Texas House and Senate moved to support it, with conservative members in opposition did so on the basis of refraining from government rule infringing on parental authority.
On Sunday, a letter composed in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign promoted the beliefs of several high-profile companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Capital One and 61 others, calling on Abbott to forsake the initiative. With tech and finance maintaining a growing hold on Texas’s industrial export, the statement comes with much gravity.
On Saturday, Civil District Court Judge Amy Clark Meachum placed a temporary injunction on the order, resolving a lawsuit filed by Texas’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal. Abbott and Paxton appealed for the decision to be reversed but were dismissed.