Meh.
A crook any way you look
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will drop his quest to seize transgender patients’ information from a Seattle children’s hospital, according to a court settlement Paxton’s office announced on Monday.
Seattle Children’s Hospital officials have said in sworn depositions that the facility does not have staff who treat trans kids in-person within Texas or remotely from Washington.
As part of the settlement, the hospital will withdraw its business license in Texas, though it wasn’t immediately clear Monday for what purposes that license was used.
The agreement comes as Paxton and the hospital face off over a November investigation opened by the attorney general two months after a new Texas law banned the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender youth.
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Suspecting that Seattle Children’s was providing youth in Texas with puberty blockers or hormone therapy, the attorney general’s office sent the Washington-based health care system an investigative subpoena demanding any patient records of Texas residents who have received transition-related care.
The AG stated in court filings that it was investigating the hospital for potentially violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Last week’s agreement demonstrates that the hospital and Paxton “have satisfactorily compromised and settled all matters in dispute,” according to the agreement signed by a Travis County judge.
Paxton sent a nearly identical request to a Georgia-based telehealth clinic, which said it stopped servicing Texas youth after transition-related care was banned in September.
See here for some background on the Seattle case and here for the Georgia case. I’m glad that Paxton won’t get any data from Seattle Children’s, but the rest feels more like a loss than a win, whether or not Seattle Children’s had provided any services to Texans. It’s making an example of them, which is a message I’m sure other providers are receiving, and also creating the template for when they start going after them for providing abortions to women from Texas. He won’t stop as long as he has the power.