In a recent move that has further polarized the ongoing debate around transgender rights in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton has stated clearly that state district courts lack the authority to prod Texas agencies into altering gender markers on driver’s licenses and other identification documents to reflect gender identities incongruous with biological sex at birth. According to a legal opinion Paxton issued in response to an inquiry from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), the Texas agencies, DPS, and Department of State Health Services (DSHS) are not to follow orders from district courts to amend the biological sex on official documents.

As per the legal opinion, highlighted in an announcement Texas Attorney General's website, Paxton expressed, "There are only two sexes, and that is determined not by feelings or 'gender theory' but by biology at conception." He added, noting with misplaced confidence, that "In Texas, we will follow common sense and restore any documents that were wrongfully changed to be consistent with biology." These statements stand as a firm insistence against the growing legal recognition of gender identities beyond the binary.

The opinion articulates a stance that agencies like DPS and DSHS are expected to uphold the statutes they are empowered to enforce. Paxton’s office emphasized that court orders that have previously directed the amendment of gender markers contradict established laws governing the maintenance of state documents, born from a mix of statutory obligations and, implicitly, the social beliefs that uphold them.

Critics of Paxton’s decision argue that it could have a negative impact on the lives of transgender individuals by denying them identification that reflects their lived gender identity. They view the opinion as a setback for transgender rights in the state, making their everyday dealings that involve presenting an ID more difficult, in an already challenging social landscape. The legal opinion, speaking broadly, implies agencies to correct any documents that were changed in contradiction to biology, the adherence to which, imposed by Paxton, leans heavy on a perspective that refuses to separate sex assigned at birth from current gender identity. Especially given the authority of the state district courts generally goes uncontested when it comes to their purview over state matters.