Last week Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate anyone providing or enabling transgender children to receive certain medically-necessary care, claiming it legally falls under the state’s definition of child abuse.
A lawsuit filed by the ACLU and Lambda Legal claims the agency has already opened at least one investigation into a parent with a transgender daughter. That mother works for the very agency now investigating her, and she has been placed on administrative leave, The New York Times reports.
Abbott, facing a difficult re-election battle, used a legal opinion authored by his attorney general, Ken Paxton – who is facing an even more challenging re-election campaign – to order DFPS to perform the investigations. Paxton’s nonbinding legal opinion was all the fuel Abbott needed to mount his attack on transgender children and their families.
That employee, who was not named in the lawsuit, “on Friday was visited by an investigator from the agency, which is also seeking medical records related to her child. The family of the child, identified in court documents only as Mary Doe, has refused to voluntarily turn over the records.”
“We are terrified for Mary’s health and well-being, and for our family,” wrote the employee in the lawsuit. “I feel betrayed by my state and the agency for whom I work.”
“Not providing Mary with the medically necessary health care that she needs is not an option for us.”