Florida’s Gender-Affirming Care Ban Is Unconstitutional, Judge Rules

Florida’s restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors and adults are unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

This decision repeals a law banning gender-affirming care for minors, including puberty-blocking drugs and hormone therapy, signed last year by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The bill also exempts transgender adults from the requirement for patients to see a doctor in person to receive transition-related care, which was particularly burdensome given that most people relied on nurse practitioners and teleconsultations.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in Tallahassee sided with 11 plaintiffs, including four transgender adults and seven parents of transgender children.

“The state of Florida may regulate as necessary, but it cannot categorically deny transgender people safe and effective treatment – ​​treatment with medications routinely administered to others with the full consent of the state, unless the purpose is to support the patient’s transgender identity,” Hinkle wrote. .

The 105-page ruling in Doe v. Lapado is the first time a federal court has addressed the constitutionality of restrictions on gender-affirming care for adults. Last year, a federal judge knocked down Arkansas’ ban on minors is unconstitutional.

“Gender identity is real. People whose gender identity does not match their birth sex often suffer from gender dysphoria,” wrote Hinkle, a 72-year-old who was nominated by Democratic President Bill Clinton. “Florida has passed a statute and policy that prohibits gender-affirming care for minors, even if it is medically necessary. The ban is unconstitutional.”

However, the plaintiffs’ complaint did not address state restrictions on gender-affirming surgeries, and the state continues to prohibit such procedures for minors and impose some restrictions on adults.

In the order, Hinkle criticized DeSantis and some state lawmakers who “clearly acted out of old-fashioned discriminatory animus” and described the “insane rhetoric” of lawmakers who incorrectly referred to the types of care transgender people expect as “castration” and “mutilation.”

Hinkle quoted an anonymous member of the House of Representatives who ranted about the dangers of gender-affirming care and falsely described it as doctors “taking little children and putting them to sleep on stretchers. Cutting off their breasts. Cutting off their genitals. Throwing them in the garbage.”

Hinkle slammed state lawmakers and wrote that the statement “is probably as far from reality as any statement made by any legislator.”

Instead, he cited nearly two dozen U.S. medical associations that support gender-affirming care for minors and adults, and wrote that “no reputable medical association has taken a position to the contrary.”

“Opponents of transgender people obviously have the right to have their beliefs. But they cannot discriminate against transgender people simply because they are transgender,” Hinkle wrote in the ruling. “Over time, discrimination against transgender people will decrease, just as racism and misogyny have decreased. To paraphrase a civil rights activist of old, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

DeSantis signed the ban after state medical boards – full of DeSantis’ political appointees – for the first time it adopted its own rules ban this care at the end of 2022. Florida became the first state in the country to introduce such a ban.

In 2022, the Sunshine State passed six anti-LGBTQ bills that included a drag queen ban and a ban on transgender people using bathrooms in schools and government buildings. Under DeSantis’ leadership, Florida has passed a number of anti-LGBTQ bills during a record two years of such legislation in states across the country.

Last June, Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction against the state’s juvenile ban, alleging only three grounds. In order, he warned that minors “will suffer irreversible harm” if they are unable to receive treatment. That same month, he also overturned Florida’s ruling ban on Medicaid coverage in the treatment of gender dysphoria.

Hinkle generally ruled in favor of LGBTQ+ rights. In 2014, he ruled that Florida’s 2008 amendment banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

However, in the decade after same-sex marriage protections were introduced at the federal level, the right began to attack transgender people and, in particular, the rights of transgender minors.

To date, more than 20 states, all of which have Republican-controlled legislatures, have passed bans and restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors, forcing families to make difficult decisions about how to best care for their child. And the courts have so far ruled mixed rulings.

The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta allowed Banned in Alabama take effect, and the Ohio-based 6th Circuit ruled that Tennessee and Kentucky could also enact their own bans. But other appeals courts have blocked bans on transgender athletes joining teams of their gender, and the 11th Circuit sided with a Florida drag brunch venue, Mary’s Hamburger, to stop the state’s drag ban.

In November, LGBTQ+ supporters he asked The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care. The Supreme Court intervened in the case Idaho April ruling focused on how the state could enforce a ban on gender-affirming care and for whom.

However, neither the Supreme Court nor any U.S. Court of Appeals has yet specifically considered the constitutionality of transitional care restrictions, Hinkle wrote.

Tuesday’s decision in Florida puts transgender health care decisions back in the hands of patients and their families, said Simone Chriss, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the case and director of the Transgender Rights Initiative at Southern Legal Counsel. Tampa Bay Times.

The ruling “restores some balance in terms of respect, dignity and decency in a state that has never needed these things so much before,” Chriss said.

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