Three stories from the Texas Tribune.
- A Texas superintendent ordered librarians to remove LGBTQ-themed books. Now the federal government is investigating.
Education and legal experts say the federal probe of the Granbury Independent School District — which stemmed from a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and reporting by NBC News, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune — appears to be the first such investigation explicitly tied to the nationwide movement to ban school library books dealing with sexuality and gender.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights notified Granbury school officials on Dec. 6 that it had opened the investigation following a July complaint by the ACLU, which accused the district of violating a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender. The ACLU complaint was based largely on an investigation published in March by NBC News, ProPublica and the Tribune that revealed that Granbury’s superintendent, Jeremy Glenn, instructed librarians to remove books dealing with sexual orientation and people who are transgender.
- Texas drops fight to prevent 18- to 20-year-olds from carrying handguns in public.
Texas will no longer fight to ban 18- to 20-year-olds from carrying handguns in public. A judge ruled earlier this year that a state law banning the practice was unconstitutional, and Texas initially filed a notice that it would appeal. But Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw withdrew the appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week.
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman’s ruling was the first major decision about Texas gun laws since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the Second Amendment protected individuals who carry weapons for self-defense.
In September, the state filed a notice of appeal, which angered gun rights activists.
The Supreme Court’s June decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen has caused a wave of gun control laws in various states to be challenged or struck down. In November, U.S. District Judge David Counts ruled that banning someone under a protective order from possessing a gun violated their Second Amendment rights, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“The court said that the way that you’ve got to decide the constitutionality of modern-day gun laws … is not by looking at modern policy considerations, but rather looking at historical laws and trying to analogize specific legal traditions from a very different time and place,” Eric Ruben, an assistant professor of law at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, told The Texas Tribune last month.
“Based on the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by Founding-Era history and tradition, the Court concludes that the Second Amendment protects against” prohibiting young adults from carrying handguns, Pittman wrote in his August decision.
- Federal court ruling may prevent Texas teens from getting birth control without parental permission.
A federal court ruling Tuesday may make it nearly impossible for Texas teens to access birth control without their parents’ permission.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that Title X, a federal program that provides free, confidential contraception to anyone, regardless of age, income or immigration status, violates parents’ rights and state and federal law.
Kacsmaryk, appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019, is a former religious liberty lawyer who helped litigate cases seeking to overturn protections for contraception. Tuesday’s ruling is expected to be appealed.
Kacsmaryk did not grant an injunction, which would have immediately prohibited Title X clinics from providing contraception to minors without parental consent. Every Body Texas, the Title X administrator in Texas, said in a statement that it is awaiting additional guidance from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on how to proceed. Title X clinics affiliated with University Health, in San Antonio, are still prescribing birth control without parental consent while they evaluate the ruling, spokesperson Shelley Kofler said.
The case was brought by Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general who designed the novel law that banned most abortions in Texas after about six weeks of pregnancy. Mitchell has also brought a lawsuit to block requirements in the Affordable Care Act that require employers to cover HIV prevention medications.
Mitchell is representing Alexander Deanda, a father of three who is “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage,” according to the complaint.
Deanda does not want his daughters to be able to access contraception or family planning services without his permission, arguing that Title X’s confidentiality clause subverts parental authority and the Texas Family Code, which gives parents the “right to consent to … medical and dental care” for their children.
