Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is suing the Biden administration over a policy that allows adolescents to access birth control without their parents’ consent, arguing that the rule violates state law requiring guardians to consent to their children’s use of contraceptives.
Paxton said in a statement that he was protecting parental rights, a popular GOP rallying cry used by Republicans to talk about culture-war issues such as education and transgender care.
“By attempting to force Texas health care providers to offer contraceptives to children without parental consent, the Biden administration continues to prove they will do anything to implement their extremist agenda — even undermine the Constitution and violate the law,” Paxton said in a statement.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in a division of the Northern District of Texas that has one federal judge, is unlikely to change much in the state, analysts said. That’s because a similar case ended in March with a ruling that required Texas providers to begin obtaining parental consent this spring without wholly striking down the rule.
But it is the latest conservative effort to challenge the Biden administration’s reproductive health-care policies and Title X, a half-century-old family-planning program.
With that March ruling already in place, some worry this week’s lawsuit is an attempt to build Paxton’s political clout by ending confidential care for teens not just in Texas but across the country.
“It seems intended to take away people’s bodily autonomies as part of a much larger campaign across the country,” said Robin Summers, the senior counsel at the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which represents family-planning providers and administrators nationwide. “This would be terrible for the health of minors seeking this care.”
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Title X, has said it is within its right to prohibit providers from obtaining parental consent because its rules supersede state law. It argues that minors’ access to confidential reproductive care is crucial for their health. HHS did not respond to a request for comment Saturday morning.
Confidential care can prevent sexually transmitted diseases and protect against potential infertility, Summers added, for children whose parents might abuse or disown them if they knew they were seeking that care.
Texas has the eighth highest teen birth rate in the country and some of the nation’s strictest abortion limits.
The new requirement for parental consent has had a swift impact on Texas providers and minors. In El Paso, one facility saw a stark drop in teens seeking appointments for contraception in the immediate aftermath of the ruling, according to a Texas Tribune article published in April.
Carmen Robles Frost, a Texas mother of two, joined the state’s suit, arguing the Title X rule takes away her right as a parent to consent to her children’s medical care and use of contraception — though Texas facilities are already now required to notify parents of such care.
Robles Frost also cites her Christian faith in the suit, saying she is teaching her two daughters to practice abstinence until marriage. Jonathan Mitchell, a prominent antiabortion attorney known for devising aggressive legal strategies to crack down on abortion in Texas, is representing Robles Frost.
Texas entities receive approximately $18 million annually in Title X funding, according to HHS. Statewide, Title X administrator Every Body Texas serves more than 180,000 clients, many of whom are low-income, people of color or members of the LGBTQ+ community. The group did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday morning.
The March decision from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling from federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who has been shaped by his antiabortion beliefs. Kacsmaryk’s ruling found that the policy denied a parent “a fundamental right to control and direct the upbringing of his minor children.”
The appeals court, however, left in place the rule that prohibits Title X providers from telling parents about their children’s use of contraceptives because HHS implemented it in 2021, after the original lawsuit was brought in 2020. It required providers in Texas to notify parents, but it did not strike down the HHS rule more broadly.
Paxton’s latest lawsuit seeks to clarify that ruling.
Kacsmaryk — a former general counsel for a conservative religious group who is the sole federal judge in the Amarillo division and was appointed by Donald Trump — will more than likely hear this case, too. Last year, he delivered on the hopes of the antiabortion world last year when he blocked U.S. government approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. (The U.S. Supreme Court allowed access to the drug in June.)
Summers worries he could provide a favorable ruling to Paxton and antiabortion advocates once again. If Kacsmaryk does, she expects appeals to be filed in a case that could make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.