Last week, news broke that Seattle Children’s Hospital had sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office over claims the office had demanded records of transgender Texans receiving gender-affirming care. Lone Star lawmakers have banned such treatment for trans youths.
Not everyone is taking kindly to Texas’ strong-arm attempt. Take, for example, Washington state Sen. Drew Hansen, who introduced a law protecting access to gender-affirming and reproductive care in that state.
Even before Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, Hansen and company realized that Texas or other anti-abortion states could someday attempt to clamp down on reproductive rights outside their respective borders.
“Our view is if states like Texas are going to be creative and aggressive in restricting reproductive freedom, then Washington state will be creative and aggressive in fighting back,” Hansen told the Observer. “And that’s what the Shield Law does.”
The Shield Law safeguards those seeking and providing reproductive or gender-affirming care in Washington. Ideally, Hansen said, the law would never have to be applied. But Paxton’s recent actions illustrate exactly why it’s needed.
Hansen explained that the law effectively prevents other states from using Washington’s courts and judicial processes — from warrants to subpoenas to extradition — to enforce their own restrictive healthcare laws.
Speaking with The Washington Post in a story published last week, he cited a famed Texas adage.
“They say, ‘Don’t mess with Texas.’ But also don’t mess with Washington State,” Hansen told that publication.“We make our own laws here. Other states don’t get to harass people here because of legal choices they made.”
Even though abortion and gender-affirming care for trans minors is already outlawed in Texas, it hasn’t stopped our conservative leaders from continuing to push the limit.
Several cities and counties here have considered or passed abortion travel bans to try to keep Texans from terminating their pregnancy in a place where it’s still legal. One Dallas woman with a non-viable fetus, Kate Cox, recently fled the state to receive an abortion after Paxton threatened legal action against any cooperating doctor or hospital.
Paxton also investigated hospitals in his home state for providing trans youth with gender-affirming care — before such care was technically banned by state law.
“Americans paying attention see Texas as a warning of tyranny.” – Kathleen Thompson, Progress Texas.
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The Seattle hospital’s lawsuit states that Paxton’s demands “represent an unconstitutional attempt to investigate and chill potential interstate commerce and travel for Texas residents to another state.” The hospital argues that the AG’s office lacks the jurisdiction and authority to demand the records.
Republican officials’ attacks on LGBTQ+ rights have already driven many Texans to uproot their homes. One North Texas mother told the Observer earlier this year that her family fled to Colorado because they feared for her transgender son.
“We had a good-sized queer community down there,” she said at the time. “And I'm terrified for all of them.”
More than 35% of all trans youth reside in a state where lawmakers have passed prohibitions on gender-affirming care, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Texas is one of several states that have mulled banning care for trans people up to the age of 26.
The AG is just one Texas conservative who’s punched down at trans kids. Gov. Greg Abbott last year called for state family welfare officials to investigate supportive parents of transgender children for supposed “child abuse.”
Paxton’s office has probed clinics in Dallas, Houston and Austin, prompting them to discontinue such services or to close, according to The Washington Post. It has also sought records from Texas’ Department of Public Safety regarding people who switched the sex on their driver’s license.
Kathleen Thompson, executive director at Progress Texas, urged folks to refrain from looking away. “If you aren’t directly affected, it may be easy to laugh off Texas AG Ken Paxton as a modern-day Count Olaf villain chasing the Baudelaire children to the ends of the Earth, to distract from Republican failures,” she said in an emailed statement, referencing the A Series of Unfortunate Events children’s novels.
“Americans paying attention see Texas as a warning of tyranny,” she continued. “We can end the misery in 2024, when we vote for candidates who support freedom to control our own bodies and futures, to freely choose our leaders, and to make a life in communities safe from crime and pollution.”
Thompson also noted that her organization dubbed Paxton the worst Texan of 2023. He beat out both the governor and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz for the (dis)honor. At the same time, she added, “queer Texans deservedly made our top five best.
“Progress Texas stands with LGBTQ+ Texans in their ongoing fight to exist, to self-expression, and community in the face of concentrated Republican assaults,” she said.
