AUSTIN, Texas — Amber Briggle is a mother of two. She has a 14-year-old transgender son and she said he's just like any other kid.
"My son is no different than yours. Right? He's not. He's athletic, he's musical, he's popular,” said Briggle.
The family has been under investigation by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services since February for providing gender-affirming healthcare to their son.
"It's been terrifying. Both my kids are in therapy. I'm losing my hair. You can hear, I'm sick over the stress of all this," Briggle said.
That's why the Briggle family, alongside, two other families, the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal, filed a lawsuit Wednesday. An attorney with Lambda Legal, Nicholas Guillory, said they want to expand on the case they had earlier this year, Doe. V Abbott, where the Texas Supreme Court ruled to temporarily stop investigations into the family who sued.
"In this new case, we hope to broaden protections already upheld by the Supreme Court of Texas in Doe v. Abbott, to as many Texas families as possible," Guillory said.
It's specifically asking to block any investigation of families that belong to LGBTQ+ organization PFLAG, which has over 600 members in Texas. Meanwhile, the Briggle family struggles to grapple with the status quo.
"Having an agent of the state come in and threaten to take your family away for doing nothing more than loving my kids unconditionally, it's unconscionable and it's vile and it needs to stop,” said Briggle.
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