Tinslee Lewis - Trial on TADA Constitutionality

Tinslee Lewis was born in February 2019. Later that year, clinicians at Cook Children's Hospital determined that Tinslee was catastrophically critically ill and that ongoing life-sustaining treatment was medically and ethically inappropriate. 

But Tinslee's mother refused to consent to a comfort measures only plan. So, Cook Children's invoked the formal dispute resolution process in the Texas Advance Directives Act. Cook planned to withdraw Tinslee's life-sustaining treatment over her mother's objections (as the law allows).

But Tinslee's got the courts to temporarily enjoin Cook from withdrawing treatment. From November 2019 to October 2020, the parties litigated over a preliminary injunction.  After the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a Texas Court of Appeals judgment, the case returned to the Tarrant County District Court. 

There, the parties are fighting over the trial date. The plaintiffs, seeking time for civil discovery, want a January 2022 trial date. Defendant Cook, concerned over Tinslee's ongoing suffering, wants a July 2021 trial date.

Meanwhile, multiple bills are moving through the Texas Legislature. Some (like H.B. 3099, S.B. 1381 & S.B. 1944) are designed to offer more procedural due process. Others (like H.B. 2609 & S.B. 917) are designed to completely eliminate the ability of hospitals to stop treatment without surrogate consent.