Mental health professionals are now included among the healthcare providers who could lose their license for providing transgender procedures for minors in Texas, according to a new legal opinion from state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Paxton, who is competing in a hotly contested Republican Senate primary in Texas on Tuesday, issued a legal opinion on Monday interpreting the state’s 2023 bill that prohibits gender transition procedures, or so-called “gender affirming care” for minors.
The law, SB 14, prohibits doctors from prescribing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or providing gender-transition surgeries to minors.
The attorney general and Senate candidate said in a press release that any “radical facilitating” of gender transition medicine on children “is committing child abuse.”
“The law is clear that these radical procedures are illegal and in no world should Texas tax dollars be used to permanently harm children,” Paxton said. “This opinion should send a clear warning there will be consequences for any medical professional, whether doctor or therapist, who is illegally ‘transitioning’ Texas kids.”
Paxton issued his legal opinion as an answer to questions from the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council, the state agency regulating medical licenses, on how to execute the three-year-old law.
The opinion Paxton issued on Monday clarifies that “any licensee that facilitates the provision of unlawful procedures or treatments that aim to transition a child’s sex” is no longer eligible to receive state reimbursement and “risk revocation of their licenses to practice.”
Paxton wrote that the definition of a healthcare provider “does not require a prescription pad or scalpel” and can apply to therapists, counselors, and other licensed mental health professionals in the state.
He also said in his opinion that the statute prohibits public money from being directly or indirectly spent on any healthcare specialist that “provides or facilitates the provision of a procedure or treatment.”
Paxton argued that most medical gender transitions begin with mental health counseling that facilitates social transitioning. Social transitioning often includes changing elements of gender expression, such as clothing and hairstyle, as well as selecting a new name or pronouns.
Paxton, as attorney general, defended the law in legal challenges that resulted in the Texas Supreme Court upholding the law as constitutional in 2024.
The Supreme Court’s 8-1 opinion on the law found that the state legislature “made a permissible, rational policy choice to limit the types of available medical procedures for children, particularly in light of the relative nascency of both gender dysphoria and its various modes of treatment.”
PLANNED PARENTHOOD MAY WEATHER THE BLOW OF GOP DEFUNDING
The opinion comes as Paxton faces a tough primary election on Tuesday against sitting Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX). Paxton has led in some recent polls. With three major candidates in contention, the top two candidates are likely to go into a run-off that would be decided in a May 26 election.
