Travis County District Court Judge Amy Meachum on Wednesday signed a temporary restraining order in a lawsuit against Gov. Greg Abbott and his directive to the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate the families of transgender youth for abuse, blocking DFPS from investigating the plaintiffs in the lawsuit ACLU of Texas, ACLU and Lambda Legal filed on Tuesday, March 1.
The restraining order stops DFPS from investigating the parents named in the lawsuit because they are working with medical professionals to provide their adolescent child with medically necessary treatment. The order is limited to the plaintiffs in that case for now, but the judge has scheduled a hearing for 10 a.m. on Friday, March 11, to decide whether to block the governor, commissioner and DFPS’s actions more broadly.
The ACLU case, Doe v. Abbott, names Abbott, DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters, and DFPS as defendants. It was filed on behalf of an employee of DFPS who has a transgender child, her husband and their transgender teen. According to the complaint, this family has had an investigator already arrive at their home. The family has filed the lawsuit anonymously. Dr. Megan Mooney, a licensed psychologist, is also a plaintiff in the suit.
You can read the ruling here.
— Tammye Nash
