Texas AG warns city of Austin not to defy law protecting minors from trans medical abuses

The Republican attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, warned the city of Austin not to defy a Texas law that bans gender-altering medical treatment.

The Austin City Council voted 10-1 for a resolution that would prohibit city resources from being used to “investigate, criminally prosecute, or impose administrative penalties upon… an individual or organization for providing or assisting with the provision of healthcare to a transgender or nonbinary individual.”

The resolution also said the city would refuse to cooperate with any investigation regarding Texas laws that prohibit medical treatment abuse against minors.

The resolution was aimed at a Texas law known as SB 14, which was approved by the governor in June 2023.

Among its provisions, the measure states that physicians can no longer perform castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, penectomy, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty or mastectomy on children for the purposes of changing biological sex. 

The law also prohibits the prescription of puberty suppressing drugs or administering hormones, such as estrogen or testosterone, to create the effects of a sex change in minors.   

Paxton warned within hours of the Austin resolution being passed that any attempt by the city to evade the law would result in consequences to the city. 

“If the City of Austin refuses to follow the law and protect children, my office will consider every possible response to ensure compliance,” he said in an official statement. “Texas municipalities do not have the authority to pick and choose which state laws they will or will not abide by.” 

But as Paxton noted, the progressive-backed resolution is likely an “empty political statement.”  

“Each clause directing the City Manager to defy SB 14 is prefaced with the nonsensical qualification, ‘except to the extent required by law.’ In other words, the Austin City Council would order the City Manager and city employees to follow the law while pretending to say the exact opposite,” said Paxton.   

Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Waxahachie, also warned, in a statement read to council members before the resolution passed, that the resolution would demonstrate that the Austin City Council can’t govern the state’s capital city.  

“There is already growing momentum in the Texas Legislature for the State to strip the City of Austin of its autonomy and take over city governance. Actions like the one being proposed today, if passed, make it abundantly clear that this Council is unfit to manage the capital city of the greatest state in our country,” the lawmaker said.   

Harrison also said the Legislature could consider further action that would create liability for council members who approved the resolution, if the resolution leads to any harms against children. 

This latest resolution from the Austin City Council follows on a similar resolution it passed in 2022 that promises unfettered abortion access in defiance of the law, which prohibits providers from doing abortions except under limited circumstances. 

Despite the Texas ban, the resolution has protected abortion access, which is still widely-available in Austin through the use of emergency contraception, known as Plan B.