A lawyer for the plaintiffs who sued to halt the abuse investigations tells me this morning that they don’t think there’s any basis for Paxton’s appeal.
There isn’t a copy of the notice of appeal or an actual appeal brief online yet.
CPS has declined to answer our questions about how the pending litigation will affect their abuse investigations.
But if we take Paxton — who doesn’t lead @TexasDFPS — at his word, he’ll urge the agency to keep investigating trans kids as the appeals process continues. #txlege
The state’s lawyers have argued 1) the judge who issued the injunction has no authority to do so and 2) the state can’t be sued over this (sovereign immunity).
That said, AG Paxton’s public statements have contradicted what the state’s lawyers have been saying in court.
The biggest contrast? In court, an assistant attorney general argued the state doesn’t think gender affirming care is abuse by default: dallasnews.com/news/politics/…#txlege
(Interesting side note: the state’s lawyer who said gender affirming care is not abuse per se last week was not in court this week. Don’t know why.)
This is all to say I wish I could be clearer on what families, doctors and teachers should expect. We may know more today. #txlege
In the meantime, here are some stories about transgender youth and their families in Texas:
Read our story from earlier today on what's in the sweeping elections bill senators will debate tonight. Highlights:
- Impose uniform early voting hours statewide.
- Further empower partisan poll watchers.
- Make it easier to overturn elections. dallasnews.com/news/politics/…#txlege
"Literally dozens of hours have been devoted by all the conferees, not just Republicans, going through line by line," @travisfortexas, R-Nacogdoches, said.
ICYMI: Last year, the @dallasnews revealed TX police regularly hypnotize witnesses in criminal investigations, helping send dozens of men & women to prison — some to their deaths.
Yesterday, we learned state police ended their hypnosis program.
2/ The Department of Public Safety would not say its officers ended their hypnosis program due to our investigation, which showed hypnotizing witness can create false memories and lead to wrongful convictions.
No, they said they’d simply moved on to better investigative tools.
3/ But state police used hypnosis on investigations at least 8x last year. 3 involved murders, including 1 cold case.
Astonishingly, these officers said they gleaned new evidence at 7 of the 8 hypnosis sessions. Will they use this evidence to build their cases? They didn’t say.