cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14615977
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is dropping a request for a Seattle hospital to hand over records regarding gender-affirming treatment potentially given to children from Texas as part of a lawsuit settlement announced Monday.
Seattle Children’s Hospital filed the lawsuit against Paxton’s office in December in response to the Republican appearing to go beyond state borders to investigate transgender health care. Paxton, a staunch conservative who has helped drive GOP efforts that target the rights of trans people, sent similar letters to Texas hospitals last year.
The Seattle hospital said in a statement that it had “successfully fought” the “overreaching demands to obtain confidential patient information.” A judge in Austin dismissed the lawsuit Friday, saying the parties had settled their dispute.
Texas is among states that have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
Jurisdiction vs standing. Jurisdiction is whether the court can rule on something and standing is whether the person suing is materially involved enough to justify filing the suit.
I can’t find in the article what court they filed suit with, they could have sued in federal court for all I know. It is worth noting though, that the hospital technically did business in Texas because they had some people working from home here. Best I can tell, this means that while they aren’t by Texas laws on whether to do a procedure, they can’t just tell the Texas AG to stuff it if he tries to sue them, because Texas courts would technically have some jurisdiction over an entity operating in Texas.
Best I can tell, their argument for standing was that they needed to make sure the Texas residents were having their consumer rights respected. According to my very limited understanding, that argument could go either way. They couldn’t stop these procedures from being done, but they might have been able to get patient records.