Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is dropping a request for a Seattle hospital to hand over records regarding gender-affirming treatment potentially given to children from Texas as part of a lawsuit settlement announced Monday.
Seattle Children’s Hospital filed the lawsuit against Paxton’s office in December in response to the Republican appearing to go beyond state borders to investigate transgender health care. Paxton, a staunch conservative who has helped drive GOP efforts that target the rights of trans people, sent similar letters to Texas hospitals last year.
The Seattle hospital said in a statement that it had “successfully fought” the “overreaching demands to obtain confidential patient information.” A judge in Austin dismissed the lawsuit Friday, saying the parties had settled their dispute.
I think it's hilarious that the Texas officials are trying to spin this as "We drove those evil child mutilators out of our state!" while SCH is just like "We never actually did any business in Texas. This doesn't impact us."
Paxton is in a statewide office though, Gerrymandering is real but we have (had, I just moved out of our shithole state) no excuse for Paxton or Abbott. Other than conservatives have a thorough hold on Texas politics.
I dunno where Republicans got this idea that they can control the behavior of their citizens in other States but it's unbelievably fucking stupid and enraging. No one is "owned" by a State simply because they are a resident of it. That's some straight up Lord / Serf kind of thinking.
Your mistake is in thinking that it's just Republicans that think you're a peasant.
Some oligarchs might just believe, at least a little, in noblesse oblige, but the thing about noblesse oblige is it's still a declaration of innate superiority.
Would be great if there was a precedent set that this type of lawsuit wasn't allowed, but I'm glad we're not gambling those kid's safety on a Texas court, even if it was in Austin.
Might be time to start paper-charting for politically sensitive operations. Billing and everything. Get the process done, give a copy to the patient to do with what they will, and shred everything hospital side.
Protecting patient's from neonazis is becoming a routine part of healthcare.
The party of States' Rights™ going outside of their states' jurisdiction to enforce state-level laws. All this work, and for what? To make a handful of people miserable, who found help at this particular hospital? For the legal precedent to make more people miserable?
This shitstain tried really hard to make a loss sound like a win. He failed miserably.
“When we merely began asking questions, [someone needs to tell him that ‘only asking questions’ has become a joke about sealioning] they decided to leave the State of Texas [I don’t understand how they could ‘leave’ when they never advertised or did business there in the first place] and forfeit the opportunity to do business here,[which was probably a very easy choice for a business based in Seattle]” Paxton said in a news release Monday.