Texas students taking steroids for gender-affirming care ineligible for UIL sports: Paxton
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released an opinion Thursday outlining that public school students taking steroids to undergo gender-affirming care would be ineligible to participate in University Interscholastic League sports, and students suspected of taking steroids for such purpose would be barred from participating in athletic competitions until an investigation is concluded.
Paxton issued the opinion at the request of Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath, who reached out for guidance after 'receiving several complaints' about a student possibly taking testosterone to undergo gender-affirming care, according to the opinion.
UIL prohibits students competing in athletic events from using steroids and requires them to agree to randomized tests, but it does make exceptions for a 'valid medical purpose,' Paxton said in the opinion. A student's gender-transitioning treatment can't be a valid purpose since such care is prohibited under Texas law, Paxton said.
The UIL is the governing body for student athletic, fine arts and academic competitions in public schools.
In 2023, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 14, which banned certain gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender children in Texas.
The state law prohibits doctors from providing gender-affirming medical treatments — including puberty blockers, hormone therapy or certain surgeries — to minors experiencing gender dysphoria, a condition in which a person's gender identity does not align with their sex at birth.
'Ultimately, the illegal provision of steroids to a child — conduct that would independently justify liability and revocation of one's medical license — cannot constitute a 'valid medical purpose,'' Paxton said in the letter.
Paxton also tells Morath that the UIL should question the eligibility of a student who is suspected of using steroids for the purposes of transitioning and that such suspected use 'obligates UIL to investigate as well as require the student-athlete to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that they are eligible.'
In October and November, Paxton sued three doctors after accusing them of violating the SB 14 ban on providing gender-affirming care to minors. On Tuesday, Paxton announced he'd entered agreements with two of the doctors to stop them from practicing medicine temporarily while the litigation continues and had obtained an injunction for a third to prevent the doctor from providing gender-affirming care to children.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas trans athletes taking steroids ineligible to play UIL sports
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Here are the new Texas laws that will affect trans and LGBTQ+ people
While largely avoiding the same level of heated pushback of years' past, Texas lawmakers passed several bills that give LGBTQ+ people in Texas, specifically transgender residents, less opportunity to receive care and maintain their identities in state records. Texas legislators filed over 100 anti-trans bills through the session, some containing provisions that have been shot down in years' prior while others proposed new restrictions. Less than 10 were ultimately approved by lawmakers. The new bills that are likely to be signed by Gov. Greg Abbott represent a yearslong movement from state conservatives to find new ways to restrict the presence of trans and LGBTQ+ Texans, advocates say. The bills that failed may also be resurrected by lawmakers in future sessions. Here's what to know. Several bills filed in the Legislature aimed to craft legal definitions of sex and gender in addition to their target goals — but House Bill 229 makes that goal its sole purpose, establishing state definitions for male and female and applying those definitions across statute. HB 229 defines a woman as 'an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova,' and a man as 'an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.' Most immediately, the bill will bolster an already existing block from state agencies on changes to gender markers on state documents, which was backed by a nonbinding opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton in March. The bill may also force those who have already switched their documents to match their identified gender to have changes reverted when they are renewed. The longer-term effects of HB 229 are still not immediately apparent, as references to man and woman are used hundreds of times in statute and may ripple into other laws affecting people's lives. Texas joins 13 other states that have also crafted their own definitions, and several other bills that also passed in the state have individual definitions for related terms like 'biological sex.' President Donald Trump issued an executive order named 'Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism' in January providing federal definitions of male and female. Similarly, HB 229 has been dubbed the 'Women's Bill of Rights' by supporters, claiming it protects women in the state from men invading their spaces. Abbott released an executive order of his own shortly after Trump's affirming the president's directive, but did not provide his own definitions. In a May post on social media, the governor said he would immediately sign HB 229 into law. Tightening the ability to change the gender on state records like drivers' licenses has been a key issue for conservative lawmakers for years, and while HB 229 sets a precedent in disallowing new changes, another bill creates new requirements entirely. Senate Bill 1188 creates a new section on all state medical records listing patients' assigned sex at birth and any physical sexual development disorders. It also bans changes to those gender markers for any reason other than clerical errors, and creates civil penalties for medical professionals who do change them. House Democrats opposing the measure during floor discussion worried that SB 1188 may scare medical providers into inputting vague or inaccurate health information out of fear of fiscal or legal retribution. The bill does allow the new section to include information on a patients' gender identity, however health care services must opt-in to provide it. The bill also creates restrictions on where health care providers can store patient data and the physical servers they use to store them, and new regulations on how artificial intelligence can be used to create diagnoses. SB 1188 is not the only bill opponents have said will create a chilling effect on the LGBTQ+ community. Some bills may be more immediate in blocking options people have to do things like change their state records, but others like SB 1188 and Senate Bill 1257 may reduce what resources are available. SB 1257 was signed by Abbott in May and mandates that insurance companies provide coverage for gender detransitioning care if they already cover gender transition care. Proponents of the law claim it enforces responsibility onto insurance companies. The law is not a ban on gender-affirming care, however opponents worry it may act as one by incentivizing insurance companies to pull coverage altogether rather than take on potential new costs. SB 1257 is the first legal mandate for detransition care in the United States, making Texas a testing ground for insurance companies' appetite to keep or pull coverage. Similar bills in Arizona, Florida and Tennessee did not pass out of their respective state legislatures in 2024. Medical gender transition care for minors was banned in Texas by the Legislature in 2023, a restriction that was upheld by the state Supreme Court in 2024. House Bill 18, primarily an overhaul of rural health care including a rural pediatric mental health care program, bans minors from accessing its resources for gender-affirming mental health counseling 'inconsistent with the child's biological sex.' The current gender transition care ban for minors does not include mental health services, only puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery, which is rare for those under 18. Another proposal headed to Abbott's desk, House Bill 1106, asserts that parents who do not recognize or affirm their child's gender identity cannot be held liable for abuse or neglect because of that lack of recognition. Access to materials and resources related to LGBTQ+ subjects are also being restricted by legislators through two key bills primarily aimed at schools. Senate Bill 12 bans Texas schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity and forbids student clubs 'based on' those subjects. The bill would prevent clubs like Gay-Straight Alliances and pride clubs, which are often tailored toward anti-bullying initiatives in schools. Opponents of the bill claim a ban on those clubs would cut off LGBTQ+ students from communities and resources that can save lives. 'One of the deadliest things that our youth go through is experiencing the perception at least of isolation, and GSAs are a powerful way that we can combat that and make sure that our youth are getting support,' said Ash Hall, ACLU Texas' policy and advocacy strategist for LGBTQIA+ rights. While SB 12 restricts instruction and student groups, Senate Bill 13 gives school boards and new advisory councils greater oversight to remove books from school libraries that go against 'local community values.' Some lawmakers and advocates worry school boards and advisory councils would be able to restrict books containing LGBTQ+ material. A third bill, Senate Bill 18, would have banned 'drag-time story hours' at municipal libraries and cut funding to those who host them, however that bill was unintentionally killed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick after a procedural error at the end of the Senate's deadline to pass bills. The small set of bills passed by legislators shift the state's treatment of LGBTQ+ Texans significantly, but still represent a fraction of what lawmakers proposed. House Bill 239, this session's bathroom ban bill, was one of the over 100 bills that did not survive and was never heard by lawmakers despite half of the House signing on as coauthors. House Bill 2704 sought a similar ban through private lawsuits rather than criminal charges, but was never picked up by lawmakers. Also left unheard was House Bill 3817, filed by Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, which would have created a new felony charge for 'gender identity fraud' if a person represented themselves as a gender besides the one they were assigned at birth to state agencies or employers. Advocates like Johnathan Gooch, communications director for Equality Texas, say that the Legislature has kept its course on anti-trans legislation for the last few sessions, and that bills that didn't get picked up by legislators may be at the forefront of future sessions. 'We're hearing rhetoric that we've heard for a very long time and just more, more bills, a variety of new ways to narrow the rights of trans people,' Gooch said. 'It just doesn't come as a mistake that the number of bills is escalating.' Disclosure: ACLU Texas and Equality Texas have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. Big news: 20 more speakers join the TribFest lineup! New additions include Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center; Michael Curry, former presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church; Beto O'Rourke, former U.S. Representative, D-El Paso; Joe Lonsdale, entrepreneur, founder and managing partner at 8VC; and Katie Phang, journalist and trial lawyer. Get tickets. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
3 Supreme Court Cases To Watch in June 2025
The clock is ticking for the U.S. Supreme Court. It's the second week of June and the justices always try to wrap up their term before the calendar hits July. As of this writing, there are still 28 cases pending. Which means that a ton of big decisions will be dropping in the next few weeks. So, what's headed our way? Here are three noteworthy cases that I'm on the lookout for. This case involves a Texas law requiring websites that contain "pornographic material" to verify that the site's users are at least 18 years old. The law's stated goal is to prevent minors from viewing porn. But as the Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry trade group, points out, there is no way to screen out minors online without also vetting the ages of adults, and Texas' intrusive age-verification process unavoidably—and unconstitutionally—burdens the free speech rights of those adults. The state's age-verification requirement "imposes a clear burden," the Free Speech Coalition told the Supreme Court, "forcing adult users to incur severe privacy and security risks—which the statute leaves largely unaddressed—before they can access constitutionally protected speech." The specific legal question here is about what level of judicial review the Texas law should face. According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, the age-verification law should be judged under "rational-basis review," which is the most deferential—meaning, it is the most pro-government—form of judicial review. It is no exaggeration to say that when the government encounters rational-basis review, the government stands an excellent chance of winning the case. However, cases involving fundamental rights such as freedom of speech are normally judged under a very different standard. That standard, known as "strict scrutiny," is the most searching form of judicial review. Under strict scrutiny, the government must, first, prove that its law serves a compelling government intent, and, second, prove that the law is the least restrictive means available of advancing that interest. If the government fails to satisfy either of those two prongs, the law is struck down. In other words, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton asks whether the 5th Circuit got it wrong by deferring to the state under rational-basis review when the 5th Circuit should have instead given the state a far more rigorous exam under strict scrutiny. If that sounds like so much legalese, please believe me when I say that the stakes are high. If the First Amendment gets watered down from "strict scrutiny" to "rational-basis" in this case, then the First Amendment will be watered down in many future cases, too. A win for Texas means a loss for freedom of speech. The FBI raided Tina Martin's home in 2017. Still reeling from an exploding flash grenade, she found herself held at gunpoint, unable to reach or comfort her understandably terrified seven-year-old son, who was in another room. To make matters worse, it was a wrong-house raid. The feds were supposed to be at a different house on a different block looking for a different person. They wrecked Martin's home and traumatized her family because the officers never even bothered to make sure they were at the correct location. However, when Martin filed a civil suit seeking damages, the federal court said she was barred from filing suit under the terms of the Federal Tort Claims Act. So, the legal question now before the Supreme Court is whether Martin should have been able to sue. In short, this case is about holding the government accountable for its misdeeds. And make no mistake, the government is actively trying to dodge accountability for the entirely avoidable damage that it caused. As Reason's Billy Binion has noted, the Justice Department's arguments against accountability include the claim, apparently made with a straight face before SCOTUS, that it would have been too much to ask for those federal officers to pause in the driveway and check the address on the mailbox before storming the house. "That sort of decision is filled with policy tradeoffs because checking the house number at the end of the driveway," Assistant to the Solicitor General Frederick Liu told the justices, "means exposing the agents to potential lines of fire from the windows." If you listen to the audio recording of that oral argument, you can hear Justice Neil Gorsuch scoff out the word "really" in apparent disbelief while Liu made the above statement. Gorsuch then asked the government lawyer: "How about making sure you're on the right street? Is that…you know, asking too much?" To require the government to make amends for its misconduct should never be asking too much. A win for Tina Martin in this case is a win for greater government accountability overall. This is the case arising from President Donald Trump's executive order purporting to abolish birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants and temporary legal visitors, such as people holding a work visa. As I've previously argued, Trump's position is unconstitutional under the text, history, and original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. If the Supreme Court rules on the merits of Trump's order, he deserves to lose 9–0. But this case is not exactly about the legality of that presidential decree. Rather, it is about whether federal district judges may issue nationwide injunctions that entirely block such presidential decrees from going into effect while the litigation against them plays out in court. Judging by last month's oral arguments, there is a chance that Trump will secure some kind of win on the nationwide injunctions issue. "Which is not exactly a surprise," as I wrote at the time, because several justices "are already on record as critics of the practice." It is possible that those critical justices will craft a technical ruling that avoids the birthright citizenship debate while at the same time using that debate as the opportunity to reach the result that they already wanted to reach on nationwide injunctions. But it is also possible that the Court will not be able to reach any kind of consensus. For its part, the Trump administration has made the sweeping claim that nationwide injunctions are always unconstitutional. Are there actually five justices on the Court willing to go that far? Maybe. But then again, maybe several justices would prefer to limit the practice without abolishing it outright. We may end up with a fractured opinion that ultimately settles little. The Supreme Court is currently scheduled to release its next batch of opinions on Thursday, June 12. We'll see what we get. One of the upsides of living in upstate New York is that there's a historic drive-in movie theater operating just a short distance away. The Hi-Way Drive-In first opened its gates in 1951 and recently kicked off its 2025 season. Attendees get to enjoy a nice mix of new releases and repertory favorites on the drive-in's four (count 'em!) huge outdoor screens. You're most likely to find me hanging around when there's a double-feature of horror classics on the bill, such as the memorable night a few years back when I caught George Romero's Dawn of the Dead followed by Romero's Day of the Dead. A bucket of fresh popcorn, a cool night breeze, and a horde of shambling zombies. What's not to love? The post 3 Supreme Court Cases To Watch in June 2025 appeared first on
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
TN bill proposes removing public officials who ‘disrupt' ICE efforts
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Republican lawmakers in Tennessee filed a bill Monday that would make releasing certain records regarding immigration enforcement actions a crime. The filing of Senate Bill 1464 comes after Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell enacted Executive Order 30, which requires the Metro Nashville Police Department and Metro councilmembers to document and publish interactions with federal immigration authorities. In May, a city document detailing 35 immigration-related interactions between Metro Police and federal agencies was released. The report initially named individuals, including a Metro Council member, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement analyst, and Homeland Security officers. However, the names were later removed from the public version of the report. PREVIOUS | TN House Speaker demands Nashville mayor rescind executive order tied to ICE interactions Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) has since demanded that the mayor rescind the order, claiming it jeopardizes state and federal agents. However, Mayor O'Connell stated he has no plans to rescind the order, adding that it 'helps makes sure that nobody can accuse local, state or federal entities of activity that did or did not occur.' Now, Sexton has joined Senator Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) in filing Senate Bill 1464. 'Mayor O'Connell's decision to release sensitive information undermines the rule of law, violates public trust, and jeopardizes the safety of those who protect our communities. This bill makes it clear: if you use your office to interfere with federal immigration enforcement or endanger officers, there will be swift and serious consequences. Tennessee will not be a sanctuary for lawlessness,' said Sexton. According to the filing, SB14 will: Make it a Class E felony for state and local officials to negligently release identifying information of officers involved in immigration enforcement; Provide for outster from office for those who violate the law; Expand the confidentiality protections under the Tennessee Public Records Act to cover undercover officers and sensitive enforcement activity; Strengthen existing penalties in state law for unauthorized disclosures of protected law enforcement information. 'The people of Tennessee expect their elected leaders to protect law enforcement—not endanger them,' said Leader Johnson. 'When a public official like Mayor O'Connell chooses political activism over public safety, especially by interfering with federal immigration enforcement, he has no business holding office in this state.' ⏩ Sexton added that Tennessee stands with law enforcement and 'will not become California, and Nashville will not become LA or San Francisco.' The bill will be formally considered during the 2026 legislative session. The legislation is reportedly co-sponsored by all the Senate Republican leadership — including Lt. Governor Randy McNally, Speaker Pro Tempore Ferrell Haile, Republican Caucus Chairman Ken Yager — as well as Finance Committee Chairman Bo Watson. News 2 has reached out to O'Connell's office for comment. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
