If Ken Paxton is anything, it’s busy.
These past two weeks, our attorney general has sued the State Fair of Texas, raided the home of an 87-year-old, and attacked the rights of transgender Texans (again). Now, he’s suing the Department of Health and Human Services because he doesn’t like a rule that protects Texans’ privacy when it comes to reproductive health care.
The Hill reports that Paxton asked a judge to strike down the rule issued in June, which strengthened the Health Insurance Portability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule regarding reproductive health.
The rule protects the privacy of pregnant people who travel across state lines to get abortions.
It bans healthcare providers and insurers from giving state law enforcement any information about people who do so.
Paxton claims the rule is too restrictive and “harms Texas’s investigative abilities.”
At the time the rule was passed, President Joe Biden praised it, saying: “Privacy and confidentiality have always been essential to high-quality health care. But today’s rule comes at a time when access to reproductive health care is under attack.”
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix in Lubbock, an appointee of Donald Trump who has often ruled against Biden’s policies. Reuters reports “the Biden administration has in the past accused Texas of ‘judge shopping’ by bringing cases in small cities like Lubbock, where local rules assign most cases to Trump appointees.”
Paxton also asked the judge to block a separate HIPAA rule issued in 2000 that says providers and insurers don’t have to disclose information regarding health unless it’s for legitimate law enforcement inquiries.
All of this is happening while Texans are increasingly seeking abortions out of state. This week, New Mexico’s Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the state has started construction on a new $10 million reproductive healthcare and abortion clinic to accommodate the thousands of patients they say are from Texas and Oklahoma. Since 2022, when Texas’s trigger law went into effect banning abortions, more than 35,000 Texans have traveled out of state to get care. (Axios reports most people went to New Mexico.)
