Attorney General Ken Paxton has recently joined a fight to prevent taxpayers from funding “gender transition” surgeries for prisoners.
Paxton’s office has joined an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals supporting Indiana’s prior appeal of a controversial district court ruling that requires the state to provide “gender transition” procedures to prison inmates.
The brief, signed by Paxton and 23 other state leaders, calls for the appeals court to overturn the lower court’s decision. It claims that the ruling would force taxpayers to fund what Paxton referred to as “dangerous and experimental procedures” for criminals.
“Taxpayers should not be forced to fund dangerous and experimental procedures for prisoners based on radical gender theory. On his first day in office, President Trump signed an Executive Order to end this kind of nonsense,” Paxton said in a press release published on January 31.
“The United States recognizes two unchangeable sexes, male and female. That biological reality has always been true despite the political activism of extremist gender theory advocates,” he added.
The recent fight from state leaders centers around a prisoner in Indiana who is currently seeking “gender-affirming surgery” while incarcerated.
The district judge ruled in favor of the inmate, granting a preliminary injunction to require the state to provide the requested surgery. Paxton and the coalition of 23 states claimed in the brief that the district court overstepped its boundaries, arguing that these prisoners do not have any constitutional right to taxpayer-funded “gender transition” procedures.
Paxton, alongside the other state attorneys general, said that the decision in question could set a dangerous standard for taxpayer funding of elective surgeries based on “radical gender theory.”
This legal fight is just part of Paxton’s efforts to challenge what he sees as “extremist gender theory” that has been pushed by advocates across the country.
His office has previously led efforts against the prescription of hormone treatments for minors, suing doctors in Texas who he claims illegally prescribed “gender transition” drugs to children, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Paxton also sued the NCAA in December of last year for allowing athletes who were not biologically female to compete in women’s sports, claiming these events are false, deceptive, and misleading for advertising as women’s events when they are, instead, “mixed-sex sporting events.”