Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is suing the Biden administration over a policy that allows adolescents to access birth control without their parents’ consent, arguing that the rule violates state law requiring guardians to consent to their children’s use of contraceptives.
Paxton said in a statement that he was protecting parental rights, a popular GOP rallying cry used by Republicans to talk about culture-war issues such as education and transgender care.
“By attempting to force Texas health care providers to offer contraceptives to children without parental consent, the Biden administration continues to prove they will do anything to implement their extremist agenda — even undermine the Constitution and violate the law,” Paxton said in a statement.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in a division of the Northern District of Texas that has one federal judge, is unlikely to change much in the state, analysts said. That’s because a similar case ended in March with a ruling that required Texas providers to begin obtaining parental consent this spring without wholly striking down the rule.
But it is the latest conservative effort to challenge the Biden administration’s reproductive health-care policies and Title X, a half-century-old family-planning program.
