In Texas, Dallas County Judge Melissa Bellan temporarily removed all barriers for transgender youth seeking medical treatments from Children's Medical Center Dallasproviding a major win for doctors fighting to restore access to gender-affirming health care for new patients, The Dallas Morning News reported.
On May 12, Bellan granted a two-week temporary restraining order against the hospital. The order halts its recent decision to stop providing certain medical treatments, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, to new adolescent trans patients while a court battle continues over whether to reverse the policy altogether.
The order came at the request of Ximena Lopez, the doctor who headed a program for transgender youth called Genecis that Children's ran jointly with UT Southwestern until last year. She first went to court in March in the hopes of forcing the hospitals to restart care to new patients.
Lopez, who led a program for trans youth run by Children's Health and UT Southwestern, sued her employers in March, after the hospitals began referring new patients to outside providers, and erased any reference to Genecis from their websites, the New York Daily News noted.
In February, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to conduct a "prompt and thorough" investigation into gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Five district attorneys in Texasfrom Dallas, Bexar, Travis, Fort Bend and Nueceshave since hit back against Abbott's directive, calling the move "cruel" and "un-American."