Best mugshot ever
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is attempting for the second time to intervene in a legal fight over gender-affirming medical care at two Dallas hospitals.
In an appeal filed this month, Paxton said that a lower court judge erred in ruling the state could not intervene in Dr. Ximena Lopez’s lawsuit against Children’s Medical Center of Dallas.
Lopez sued in March to reverse the decision to halt certain treatments for new patients and remove the branding at Genecis, a program for transgender youth that Children’s ran with the University of Texas Southwestern until November. While the program itself remains dismantled, a lower court judge ruled in May that Lopez could treat new patients using puberty blockers and hormone therapy while her case is being litigated.
In his appeal, Paxton said the state has an interest in the case because Lopez is challenging his interpretation of Texas law and has accused the governor of pressuring the hospitals to make changes at Genecis. He added the state acted “through” UT Southwestern, a public university, to discontinue certain treatments for new trans patients at Genecis.
See here and here for the background. I got this from the Daily Kos pundit roundup on Saturday, so that’s all I’ve got. In May, the district court judge in Dallas County gave Dr. Lopez and Genecis an injunction through April of 2023 to continue their work. Paxton had petitioned to intervene in the case, since the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas did not pursue an appeal, and we denied at the district court. He’s now appealing to the Fifth Court of Appeals – the state appeals court, not the federal one – with the goal (I presume) to put a hold on the injunction as the litigation proceeds. That’s about all I can glean from this excerpt, so we’ll see what that court has to say. I would expect Paxton to continue on to SCOTx if he loses again.