The flurry of criticism — during a public comment session at a meeting of the Texas Family and Protective Services Council in Austin — came on the same day a judge heard arguments on whether to block state officials from conducting such investigations.
“Children will die because of Governor Abbott’s order,” warned the mother of a teenager who, she said, attempted suicide at the age of 12 after coming out as transgender.
In district court, where Judge Amy Clark Meachum ruled last week the state had to stop a child abuse investigation of a DFPS employee and her family named in a lawsuit, a child protective services supervisor testified that she had resigned in large part because of the investigations. She called the investigations an “overreach” into a “private medical decision” between a parent, a child and their doctor.
Lambda Legal attorney Paul Castillo called the state directive a “vast overreach” that sought “to expand the definition of ‘child abuse’ to target transgender youth and the parents who support them.”
An assistant state attorney general argued that the judicial branch could not “infringe” on the executive branch’s ability to ensure the welfare of children.
At the Texas Family and Protective Services Council meeting, dozens of people urged the state to remember its duty to protect all minors, including transgender children. Advocates, including nurses and child care workers, read statements from trans youth and parents who they said were terrified to appear in person.
In one statement, a parent asked, “How can someone not want a child to feel comfortable in their own skin?”
“We hope to be able to provide them with the tools to make them the best version of themselves without the fear of our child being ripped from a loving home,” the parent added.
An attorney read a statement from a grandparent of a transgender child who said her son’s family will be moving out of Texas because of the governor’s directive.
“I’m relieved that both my grandchildren won’t have to deal with the stress of the newest way to single them out,” the grandparent said.
Another statement was titled, “Don’t Make Us Write Our Transgender Son’s Obituary.”
The family wrote that “gender affirming care is life-saving care.”
Ricardo Martinez, CEO of the LGBTQ rights group Equality of Texas, said he had a message for youth: “To trans young people across Texas and the country, you have done absolutely nothing wrong. You are perfect just the way you are. And there are countless people across Texas, across this country, across the world that are fighting to protect your right to exist authentically.”
Rocio Fierro Perez, a political coordinator with the Texas Freedom Network, read a letter from a 13-year-old transgender girl: “Having support can literally save a child’s life and hearing from people in power that your parents are abusing you and you’re not real will and has ended the lives of many children.”
Civil rights groups said in a court hearing last week they were aware of at least three families under investigation.
The state’s actions have been widely criticized as an attack on transgender children.
Abbott and Paxton appealed Meachum’s decision, but the state’s Third Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal over jurisdiction.
Meachum’s temporary restraining order came after the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas and LGBTQ civil rights organization Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit on behalf of the parents of a transgender girl.
The child’s mother, a DFPS employee, had been suspended from her job because of Paxton’s legal opinion declaring gender-affirming treatments and procedures for transgender children a form of child abuse.
CNN’s Nicole Chavez and Ashley Killough contributed to this report.
