Why a Texas judge's opinion challenging contraception 'lacks standing': report

13 December 2022

Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk filed an opinion last week in the case Deanda v. Becerra, which challenges the foundation of the federal program Title X. Originally passed in 1970, Title X funds and supports family planning services, which includes providing contraception. Kacsmaryk – who was appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump in 2019 – is the first to come out against women’s use of birth control, Vox reports.

Alexander Deanda, a father of daughters, claims he is “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.”

He believes that any minor – under the age of 18 – should need a parent’s supervision to receive any reproductive health services, including birth control. And his stance is that “the Title X program violates the constitutional right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children.”

Vox reporter Ian Millhiser, an attorney himself, says this argument has been around for decades but continues to fall short of succeeding at the federal level. Millhiser also broke down the details of Kacsmaryk’s opinion, citing that there are many legal errors throughout the document – errors that even “a first-year law student would catch.”

He reports that, according to the Constitution, one cannot “file federal lawsuits challenging a government program unless they’ve been injured in some way by the program” – which in legal terms, is referred to as “standing.” Therefore, because Deanda’s daughters have not been injured in any way, Millhiser asserts that “the case should have been dismissed due to lack of standing.”

With a long history of skewing the law in a way that aligns with conservative beliefs, Kacsmaryk penned a 2015 article in which he wrote that the “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960s and 70s “sought public affirmation of the lie that the human person is an autonomous blob of Silly Putty unconstrained by nature or biology, and that marriage, sexuality, gender identity, and even the unborn child must yield to the erotic desires of liberated adults.”

Millhisir predicts the case will ultimately be reversed by the Supreme Court due to its lack of standing, but in the interim, health clinics could take a major financial hit.

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