Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton relied on false claims, exaggerations and errors to conclude that gender-affirming medical care constitutes child abuse, a report by university-level medical experts has concluded.
Paxton's legal opinion on transgender care, issued in February, formed the basis of Gov. Greg Abbott's directive requiring Child Protective Services to investigate all reports of families with children who are receiving gender-affirming care.
But the report published Monday by medical and legal experts at Yale University and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center said Paxton's opinion was so full of errors and false claims that it appeared to have been "motivated by bias" and crafted to reach a predetermined goal: denying medical care to transgender youths.
"The repeated errors and omissions in the AG Opinion are so consistent and so extensive that it is difficult to believe that the opinion represents a good-faith effort to draw legal conclusions based on the best scientific evidence," the report's executive summary said.
"These are not close calls or areas of reasonable disagreement," the report added. "The AG Opinion ... ignores established medical authorities and repeats discredited, outdated, and poor-quality information."
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