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.
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