(NewsNation) — A federal court has upheld the Texas law requiring health clinics to tell parents if girls under 18 obtain contraception, and sees no conflict with a federal law mandating confidentiality.
This week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals mostly upheld a 2021 parental consent law, and a 2022 lower court ruling, on the Texas law, despite the federal law known as Title X that bans the clinics it funds from notifying parents.
The ruling from the three-judge appeals panel in New Orleans came with a comment that perplexes Title X advocates. “Title X’s goal is not undermined by Texas’s goal,” wrote Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan. “To the contrary, the two laws reinforce each other.”
Every Body Texas, the non-profit organization that administers Title X in Texas, is not so sure.
“The Fifth Circuit did not address whether (the rule) itself preempts Texas’s state parental consent law, leaving that significant legal question for another day,” the group writes in a statement on its website.
“The ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is, therefore, not a clear statement on whether minors in Texas can legally access confidential contraceptive care without parental consent in Title X clinics, or whether Title X providers in Texas must continue to comply with Texas’s state parental consent law.”
An Amarillo father, Alexander Deanda, brought the original lawsuit, claiming Title X’s confidentiality provisions violated his parental rights. He did not show evidence that any of his three minor daughters sought or obtained birth control without his consent.
Since 1970, The Title X Family Planning Program has funded family planning care for low-income and uninsured people. It’s part of the larger Public Health Service Act. Title X’s annual funding has been level at $286 million for about ten years.
Past rulings around the U.S, like this 2007 Philadelphia case, have upheld Title X. In 2019 the Trump administration banned Title X grants to clinics that provide abortion services, but the Biden administration reversed that ban.
