Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Secretary Xavier Becerra, and other members of the Biden Administration. The lawsuit challenges a new rule that Paxton claims overrides state-law rights for parents to consent to their children's medical care.
For over five decades, the Title X statute of the federal Public Health Service Act has funded grants to enhance access to "comprehensive voluntary family planning services." While HHS distributes these grants, recipient organizations are required to comply with relevant state laws. Previously, both a federal district court and a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that Title X projects must adhere to Texas’s parental-consent laws when providing prescription contraceptives to minors.
The contested rule from the Biden Administration allegedly contradicts this legal precedent by prohibiting Title X projects from obtaining parental consent before supplying contraceptives to minors. According to Texas law and Fifth Circuit precedent, such consent is mandatory. Paxton's lawsuit seeks to nullify this agency rule and obtain a permanent injunction against its enforcement.
“By attempting to force Texas healthcare 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,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Federal courts have already shut down their previous attack on parental rights, and I will ensure that we stop them once again.”
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