More than 60 major businesses, including household names in technology and retail, have signed onto a new advertising campaign in Texas protesting a move by the state’s governor to label as “child abuse” medical treatments that are widely considered to be the standard of care for transgender teenagers.

In digital ads and a full-page advertisement in Friday’s Dallas Morning News, the businesses assailed a Feb. 22 directive by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, requiring teachers and medical professionals to report to child protective services parents who are helping their children get such treatments as puberty-suppressing drugs and hormones…

Mr. Brown said that Texas lawmakers had caused intense fear among families of transgender youths, who he said were some of the most vulnerable people with the fewest legal protections.

“People are really scared,” he said. “I know families who have had to move hundreds of miles from their homes because their lawyers are telling them it’s not safe in the country they live in, in Texas. The lawmakers who do this, they’re making a short-term wager with their extremist base that they’re going to score a couple points at the risk of people’s lives.”