Texas vs The LGBT

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State Law

As of 2013, Texas state law does not protect employees from discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Since at least 1999, no bill prohibiting discrimination by employers based on sexual orientation or gender identity has made it out of the committee stage in the Texas Legeslature. During the Legislatures 2013 regular season, House Bill 238 introduced by Represenative Mike Villarreal, House Bill 1146 introduced by Represenative Eric Johnson, and Senate Bill 237 introduced by Senator Letica Van de Putte would have prohibited this kind of discrimination; however; all these bills died in their respective committees. Judge Lee Rosenthal of the Southern District of Texas has ruled that sexual orientation and gender identity fall under federal Protections. However, in April 2018, a federal judge of the U.S Disctrivt Court for the Southern Disctrict of Texas ruled that, although a woman hadn't proven she had been discriminated against for being transgender by the company Phillips 66, if that had been proven, then the womean would have "had a case" under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Judge, who had been appointed by President George H. W. Bush in 1992, cited other recent cases as shaping the final decision.

Texas State law does not protect persons from housing or public accomodations discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. House Bill 2215 introduced by Represenative Jessica Farrar in the Legislature's 2009 regular session would have prohibited this kind of discrimination; however;, the bill died in the Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee of the House of Represenatives.

Counties With LGBT Protections

Bexar County

Has protections for sexual orientation and gender identity that applies to county employment.

Dallas County

Has protections for sexual orientation and gender identity and applies to private employment, county employment, and county contractors.

Walker County

Has protections for sexual orientation and gender identity and applies to county employment.

Travis County

Has protections for sexual orientation only and applies to housing.

Harris County

Has protections for sexual orientation and gender identity and applies to county employment.

Cities With LGBT Protections

The following Texas Cities have ordinances prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, public accommodations, city employment, private employment, and city contractors.

Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, and San Antonio prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in private and public employment, housing, public accommodations.

Denton has protections for sexual orientation and gender identity for city employment and city contractors.

El Paso has protections for sexual orientation and gender identity for city employment and city contractors.

Arlington, Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Houston, Lubbock, Mesquite and Waco have protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity for city employment and/or city contractors only.

In Texas, any adult may adopt a child without regard to the adult's sexual orientation or gender identity. Lesbian couples can access IVF and assisted insemination treatment.

Texas statutes do not prohibit same-sex second-parent adoptions or adoption by a same-sex couple and sate courts have on occasion approved such adoptions. The Texas Courts of Appeals has not considered the question directly but has said hat a lower court's approval of an adoption by a same-sex couple did not represent a "fundamental error".

A court may not issue a supplemental birth certificate for a child adopted by two men or two women. The primary purpose of the certificate is to prove the parent/child relationship to outside entities, such as schools, insurance companies, and port offices. On November 15, 2012, Represenative Rafael Anchia introduced House Bill 201 to the legislature's 2013 regular session. The bill would have deleted the prohibition against issuing a supplemental birth certificate for a child adopted by two men or two women. The bill died in the Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence committee of the House of Represenatives.

In 2009, the Texas Legislature authorized a court order relation to a person's sex change to be acceptable proof of identity for a marriage license.

For georaphical areas under the jurisdiction the alidity of a marriage, a person's sex is determined at birth and is not changed by surgery or drug therapy. This ruling allowed a person born male who transitioned to female to marry a woman in that court's jurisdiction. In February 2014, the Texas Court of Appeals in Corpus Christi held that state law had changed since Littleton and now recognized sex reassignment, so that parties to a lawsuit contesting whether or not a mariage was an invalid same-sex marriage or a valid different-sex marriage needed to have their dispite heard by a trial court. In order for transgender people to change their legal gender on their borth certificates, they must undergo sex reassignment and a name change.

Until the U.S Supreme Court in 2003 declared sodomy laws unconstitutuional in Lawrence v. Texas, certain sexual acts between persons of the same sex were a criminal offense in Texas, termed "deviate sexual intercourse:, The offense as a Class C misdemeanr, punishable by a fine not to exceed $500. As of January 2018, Texas was one of those three states to still have statutes criminalizing same-sex sexual acts, alongside both Oklahoma and Kanasa (wow Alabama isn't in there). The Legislature has failed to act on several proposed bills that would repeal the Texas statute.

Sex Education

The Texas Department of State Health Services has developed model education programs on AIDS and HIV; however, Texas law requires that the "materials in the education programs intended for persons younger than 18 years of age ... state that homosexual conduct is not an acceptable lifestyle and is a criminal offense...." In practice, few schools disctricts include that language about homosexual conduct in their sex education materials. This law also has not been modified since Lawrence v. Texas.

Romeo and Juliet Law

Texas provides an affirmative defense to a person who has engaged in unlawful sexual with a child under 17 years of age, if the person is not more than three years older than the child, so long as the person is not of the chil's same sex, quite similar to the law adopted from Alabama. There has been no published constituational challenge of this statute since 2015 U.S Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodeges, in which the court held that same-sex marriage bans breach the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to th U.S Constitution. Texas has been the only state to maintain such a distinction on its books since the Kansas Supreme Court found a similar Kansas Statute to be unconstitutional in 2005.

Links

{Alabama Romeo And Juliet Law}

{Texas Romeo And Juliet Law}

{Alabama vs The LGBTup (Amino)}

Information

Wikipedia

Texas.gov

The Texas Tribune