Texas' gender-affirming care law: Austin council weighs making enforcement a low priority

Some Austin City Council members want to send a message reaffirming their ideological differences against the Republican-led Texas Legislature's passage last year of gender-affirming care restrictions.

The council will consider a resolution Thursday that would de-prioritize the city's enforcement of state laws that restrict or criminalize access to gender-affirming care.

This comes on the heels of Senate Bill 14, a law that went into effect in September and bans puberty blockers, hormone therapy and other gender-affirming care for minors in Texas. The law also and prohibits medical professionals from administering such procedures on minors and requires the Texas Medical Board to revoke the license of any physician who does.

"Obviously we're subject to those laws as a city within the state of Texas, but we just want to make it clear to our police department that these are not a priority for enforcement," Council Member José “Chito” Vela, who sponsored the resolution, told the American-Statesman.

The resolution states that if any state law or regulation that comes with criminal punishment, civil liability, administrative penalties or professional sanctions related to gender-affirming care, its enforcement will be the lowest priority for city personnel.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the resolution was co-sponsored by Council Members Ryan Alter, Zohaib ''Zo'' Qadri, José Velásquez and Vanessa Fuentes.

Vela said this resolution is similar to the GRACE Act — Guarding the Right to Abortion Care for Everyone Act — which he authored and was passed by the Austin City Council a month before Texas' abortion ban went into effect in 2022.

"We're still subject to the laws ... there's no question about that," Vela said. "As a community, these types of criminal offenses are not a priority for us and we want to make sure that the targeted communities understand that as well."

The resolution has already drawn pushback from some Republican members of Texas Legislature, such as Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, who quoted a post about the resolution on X and said that he would be refilling his "District of Austin" bill.

The 2021 bill that Cain authored sought to turn Austin into a district that would be overseen by the Texas Legislature — an arrangement analogous to Washington, D.C., and its relationship with the federal government.

The proposal, House Bill 4521 in the 87th Legislature, did not make it out of committee.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin to weigh enforcing gender-affirming care law as low priority