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Texas profs file bizarre anti-abortion lawsuit

The weird shit just keeps coming and coming. Today a pair of professors at UT Austin, backed by the state of Texas, sued the Biden administration over its new Title IX rules. Here's what they specifically object to:

  1. They won't refer to their students using the pronoun "they."
  2. They refuse to allow their TAs to cross dress. I'm genuinely not sure what they mean by this. They refer to "transvestites," and it's unclear if this is their insulting way of referring to trans people or if they're referring to cis men who dress in drag.
  3. They won't approve an "excused absence" from class in order to obtain an abortion. Ditto for anyone who uses abortion drugs obtained through the mail, since they say that's forbidden by the Comstock Act.
  4. Finally, they won't hire TAs who have obtained "illegal" abortions.

This is all crazy performative bullshit. (1) The pronoun thing is just tiresome provocation. (2) I doubt they've ever had a cross-dressing TA. (3) I also doubt they've ever had a student ask for an absence in order to get an abortion. Kids miss class all the time anyway. (4) As for hiring TAs who have had abortions, how would they ever know? Are they planning to ask?

This sounds like a standing disaster for starters, and little more than an attempt to grab headlines beyond that. But they filed the suit in Amarillo so that it would be decided by the infamous Matthew Kacsmaryk, which might give them a chance at an initial victory.

That's Texas for you. Don't mess with 'em.

32 thoughts on “Texas profs file bizarre anti-abortion lawsuit

  1. different_name

    Sad little snowflakes begging for attention.

    Maybe I just don't know how they do things in Texas, but when I was in college, my medical needs were none of my prof's business, and I would have cheerfully told them that had they asked. I may have been young, but if they considered me legally responsible for my college bills, they could otherwise treat me as an adult.

  2. bebopman

    This is just about trying to scare voters that these “problems “ are prevalent in today’s woke colleges. “It’s so bad we *had* to go to court!” The only other legal brief that they file will say, in full, “Boogedy! Boogedy! Boogedy!”

  3. bad Jim

    So, if the professors won't refer to their students using the pronoun "they", do they just repeat "the students" over & over?

    "How was the first day of class?"

    "The usual. The students came into the room, then the students sat down in their seats and the students took out their laptops."

    1. Batchman

      The suit (if you read it) specifically says he refuses to use "they" as a singular pronoun. So your conjecture wouldn't apply.

      Your post, however, does bring to mind the syntactic contortions the Methodist Church goes through to avoid referring to God with a pronoun.

      1. TheMelancholyDonkey

        If any of them are English profs, I hope they never assign A Comedy of Errors. Act IV, Scene 3 begins:

        There's not a man I meet but doth salute me
        As if I were their well-acquainted friend;
        And every one doth call me by my name.

    1. Austin

      Spinning them off into their own independent country would suffice. They would quickly either (1) adopt a lot more taxes to pay for all the shit they freeload off the feds for or (2) become a failed state begging for readmission into the US after their first huge hurricane.

      1. geordie

        I'm all for Texas bashing but it is the second largest state GDP in the USA and is pretty much middle of the pack in terms of return on federal taxes. Perhaps over time they would drive out the wealth creators with repressive laws but it would take quite a while for that to happen.

        1. Martin Stett

          Rest assured the wealth creators--the rich and powerful--will never have to face the same laws as the peons.

    2. lawnorder

      I'm sure that Mexico would accept the territory, but only on the condition that it comes unpopulated.

  4. D_Ohrk_E1

    If we've learned anything by now, the Alito-Thomas Court has a double-secret unspoken rule to obviate any standing issues when they need a case to change settled law.

  5. jte21

    Isn't all this stuff, um, confidential information under HPPA? WTF would your professor have a right to know why you're asking for time off to go to the dr?

    Also, I think the TAs and students should purposefully misgender the profs, referring to them loudly as "Ms!" and "her" and stuff during class. After all, you don't get to choose your gender pronouns, other assholes do. If they have a problem, hey, talk to my 1A lawyer, sweetcakes!

    1. mertensiana

      HIPAA only applies to medical service providers, not anyone else. There may be other privacy laws that would apply, though.

      1. Crissa

        Employers can't ask health questions aside from asking medical limitations and asking for a doctor's note about them. They can't ask for diagnoses, per the ADA, nor can they refuse to hire you for something that doesn't stop you from completing the tasks. In fact, they're required to make sure the tasks can be completed if possible, despite any limitations a worker has.

  6. Altoid

    This sounds a lot like a Son of South Park operation-- producing official court documents that use words like "transvestites" and mention weird shit like snooping into abortion histories, just so people will say "I can't believe they actually said that in a court filing." And then Kacsmaryk can bump it up the chain to keep shifting that Overton window.

  7. MindGame

    Just one of many crazy things going down in the Loony Star State. The new Texas GOP platform, among other things, defines all abortion as murder, requires the Bible be taught in all public schools, and would implement a sort-of electoral college system for all state-wide elections, requiring any candidate to win a majority of all the counties, something that would effectively ban any Democrat from state-wide office.

    1. aldoushickman

      "requiring any candidate to win a majority of all the counties"

      Good lord. Texas has an enormous number of counties with nearly nobody living in them, such that the least populated county (Loving County) has fewer than one-one hundred thousandth the population of the most populated (Harris). This would be vastly _worse_ than the electoral college, where at the greatest disparity is ~67:1 (California:Wyoming).

  8. Dana Decker

    Texas related:
    After the Texas House of Representatives impeached A.G. Ken Paxton (~60 D, ~60 R vs ~25 R), but failed to achieve conviction, in part because Trump leaned on the Texas Senate, there was an effort by Trump to have those TX House GOP that voted to impeach primaried by his MAGA stooges.
    There were 7 races, including one for the GOP Speaker of the TX House (!).
    March decided 4, and there were 3 runoffs this week.
    Score: trad GOP 4 wins, MAGA GOP 3 wins
    This is way-down-ballot stuff, and largely uncovered by the press outside of Texas, but perhaps a good indicator of how effective Trump is in molding the GOP into a pure MAGA outfit. I think 4 wins out of 7 by trad GOP is a hopeful sign.
    Results:
    MAGA v incumbent, **winner

    David Covey v ** Dade Phelan (Speaker)
    **Alan Schoolcraft v John Kuempel
    **Helen Kerwin v DeWayne Burns
    **Mike Olcott v Glenn Rogers
    Liz Case v ** Stan Lambert
    Stormy Bradley v ** Drew Darby
    Barry Wernick v **Morgan Meyer

  9. Bluto_Blutarski

    "They refer to "transvestites," and it's unclear if this is their insulting way of referring to trans people or if they're referring to cis men who dress in drag."

    My guess is they are objecting to young women who wear jeans or slacks.

    1. Batchman

      I infer that the suing party neither knows nor cares about the distinction. In fact he probably believes there is no difference between a biological man who asserts they are a woman and a man who likes to dress up as one.

      1. Crissa

        Well, the 'biological man' is nonsensical first off, since 'man' isn't a biological thing but a social role. Secondly, gender and sex have two dominate poles, but they have serious overlap both physically and socially.

  10. E-6

    Profs in a school in Austin sue the U.S. Dept. of Education, which is in D.C., in . . . Amarillo. Good thing Congress put an exception in the venue statutes for cases filed in Texas. Oh, wait . . .

  11. Salamander

    Well, that's blatant pro-male bias. No man will have gotten an abortion. No man would cut class to get one. And, in my opinion, if you're going to describe yourself as "LGBTQIA+++", that's a whole crowd of people, and even people who like grammar should agree it rates the pronoun "they".

  12. memyselfandi

    What a weird jurisdiction texas must be since where I live many would be illegal for a professor to even attempt. Fr example, it is illegal for a professor to make any attempt to find out about a students medical situation. Nor do professors have any role and minimal input on what TAs they get. My department would say, if you won;t work with the TA you were given, then you have to do the TAs job yourself. And the TA would get paid to help a different professor.

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