Case: Loe v. Texas

In this case challenging Texas Senate Bill 14 (SB14), a statute categorically banning healthcare professionals from providing gender-affirming care to minors and barring state funding for medical treatment of gender dysphoria, the Texas Supreme Court upheld the statute under the Texas Constitution. 

On June 2, 2023, the Governor of Texas signed SB14 into law. It was scheduled to take effect on September 1, 2023. 

On July 12, 2023, five Texas families with transgender children, three medical providers, and LGBTQ+ nonprofits PFLAG and GLMA brought suit in the 201st District Court in Travis County, Texas against SB14. Plaintiffs were represented by private firms, Lambda Legal, the ACLU, and the Transgender Law Center. They sued the State of Texas, the Texas Attorney General, the Texas Medical Board, and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. 

Plaintiffs alleged that statute violated the state constitution. Specifically, plaintiffs alleged the statute violated parents’ right of parental autonomy under Article I, § 19 (the Due Course of Law Clause); interfered with medical practitioners’ property interests in their licenses and liberty interest in their occupations under Article I, § 19 (the Due Course of Law Clause); violated transgender citizens’ equal protection rights under Article I, § 3; and constituted sex discrimination under Article I, § 3a of the Texas Constitution. Plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief. As well, plaintiffs requested a temporary injunction to enjoin defendants from enforcing SB14. 

On August 25, 2023, Judge Maria Cantú Hexsel granted a temporary restraining order to the plaintiffs, enjoining Texas from implementing and enforcing SB14 until the conclusion of litigation. The district court found that the statute likely violated the Texas Constitution on all four counts alleged by the plaintiffs.

The State appealed the temporary injunction directly to the Texas Supreme Court on August 28, 2023. The Texas Supreme Court issued an 8-1 opinion penned by Justice Rebecca Aizpuru Huddle on June 28, 2024, upholding the statute and vacating the temporary restraining order. The majority found for the State on all four constitutional claims, declining to apply strict scrutiny to the challenged statute. The Court stated that it had “never questioned the Legislature’s constitutional authority to regulate medical treatments.” It found that neither parental rights nor medical practitioners’ property rights are absolute, and declined to recognize discrimination against transgender people as sex discrimination or “transgender status” as a protected class. State v. Loe, 692 S.W.3d 215, 222 (Tex. 2024). 

Justice Jimmy D. Blacklock wrote a concurrence, joined by Justice John Phillip Devine, characterizing the conflict as one of moral and philosophical point of view to be resolved by the legislature. Justice J. Brett Busby and Justice Evan Young also filed concurrences, both emphasizing that parental rights are broad but rooted in the nation’s history and traditions. Justice Debra H. Lehrmann wrote the sole dissenting opinion, arguing that parental rights are a fundamental right that should trigger strict scrutiny and criticizing the majority’s ad hoc approach to parental authority, which excluded medical treatments from parental authority for being “new.”

On November 6, 2024, the case was remanded to the district court. On November 22, 2024, Plaintiffs filed a motion of nonsuit and the case was closed.