DALLAS — An employee from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services showed up at a 13-year-old transgender boy’s middle school to interview him as part of an investigation into his family over the use of gender-affirming medical treatments, according to newly filed court documents.
The child, identified in court documents under the pseudonym Steve Koe, was interviewed in a school conference room for an hour about his gender identity and mental health history, his mother, called Carol Koe, said in a signed declaration. The surprise interview, along with interviews of his parents, has caused the child significant mental and emotional stress, and even caused him to miss school for multiple days because of anxiety, his mother said.
“Steve told me he had a ‘meltdown’ and became very fearful and upset that something might happen to me or his dad because of who he is,” Carol said in the declaration.
The family’s case is one of at least 11 that DFPS opened following a directive from Gov. Greg Abbott to investigate the use of gender-affirming medical treatments as a form of child abuse, based on an opinion issued by Attorney General Ken Paxton. At least eight of those investigations were closed without a child being removed from their home.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled in June that Abbott and Paxton don’t have the authority to order DFPS to undertake such investigations, but the agency decided to continue them despite the ruling.
Koe’s declaration is one of two filed as part of a June lawsuit that aims to halt such investigations for families who are members of the national nonprofit LGBT group PFLAG. The families that made the new declarations are not being added to the lawsuit as plaintiffs, said a lawyer from Lambda Legal, one of the groups who filed the lawsuit.
A Travis County judge issued an injunction prohibiting DFPS from continuing child abuse investigations into two families as part of the suit, but delayed a decision on whether an injuction could be implemented to cover investigations into all PFLAG member families. Wednesday’s declarations were filed to update the court on the need for the broader injunction.
DFPS, the office of the governor and the office of the attorney general did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new declarations.
The investigations have drawn significant criticism from both people outside and inside DFPS. A group of the department’s staffers filed a brief in August that said the policy could put the child protection agency over the brink of collapse.
Two weeks before the brief was filed, The Dallas Morning News wrote that internal documents revealed that rollout of the investigations was marked by secrecy and confusion. Already this year, more than 2,000 employees have left the agency.
Both the state and the nation’s largest medical groups support the use of age-appropriate and individualized gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The medications are used to treat gender dysphoria, or the feeling of discomfort or distress that can occur for people who identify as a gender different from the gender or sex assigned at birth.
Medical treatments represent just one of many treatment options recommended by the World Professional Organization for Transgender Health, which sets the standards of care for adolescent patients experiencing gender dysphoria. Puberty blockers and hormone therapies are only used after an adolescent has started puberty.
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