Texas court gives father power over daughter’s birth control use

A federal appeals court has ruled that a Texas father has the authority to consent to his teenage daughter’s use of birth control under the federal Title X programme, claiming a state parental rights law preempts the federal statute.

On Tuesday, a three-panel judge of the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that prevents minors from obtaining contraceptives at federally-funded Title X clinics without parental consent. But they stopped short of ruling whether or not those groups could notify parents or obtain consent.

The decision ignores a long-held precedent that says minors have similar rights to adults in accessing contraceptives without parental consent.

It was based on a case, first brought forward in 2020, by Alexander Deanda – a father of three girls who is raising his children “in accordance with his Christian beliefs”, which includes abstaining from pre-marital sex. He claimed that he wanted to be informed of his children’s access or trial of contraceptives and that a Texas state law awarded him that right.

Mr Deanda’s lawsuit was brought by Jonathan Mitchell, the former solicitor general of Texas, the attorney who argued to the Supreme Court in favour of Donald Trump in Trump v Anderson and the man credited with creating the novel legal theory that helped Texas ban abortion at six weeks.

He argued that the Texas law conflicted with the federal statute in Title X, a federally-funded family planning and reproductive health programme that gives low-income people or families access to services like contraceptives, sexually transmitted infection exams, cancer screenings and more.

Birth control pills rest on a counter in Centreville, Maryland

Title X allows those without health