A federal judge on Tuesday struck down parts of Florida’s restrictions on transition-related medical care for transgender minors and adults, declaring several statutes that ban such care unconstitutional.
The law, championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, made Florida among the most restrictive states for transgender care in the nation.
“Transgender opponents are of course free to hold their beliefs,” Judge Robert L. Hinkle of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, Tallahassee Division, wrote in his opinion. “But they are not free to discriminate against transgender individuals just for being transgender. In time, discrimination against transgender individuals will diminish, just as racism and misogyny have diminished. To paraphrase a civil-rights advocate from an earlier time, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Hinkle added, “The State of Florida can regulate as needed but cannot flatly deny transgender individuals safe and effective medical treatment — treatment with medications routinely provided to others with the state’s full approval so long as the purpose is not to support the patient’s transgender identity.”
Hinkle’s ruling strikes down administrative rules of a law enacted in May 2023 that banned puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans minors and placed restrictions on how all trans people, including adults, can receive care. The law required that trans people seek hormone therapy from a physician rather than another licensed health care provider and that the trans patient provide in-person written consent, making it illegal to receive such care via telehealth.
Hinkle wrote that “it is clear that anti-transgender animus” motivated sponsors of the law, pointing to inflammatory public comments made by some of the bill’s supporters, including one Florida House member who accused doctors of cutting off body parts of "little children" and throwing them in the trash.
“Probably about as far removed from reality as any statement by any legislator ever,” Hinkle wrote. “Nobody who voted for the bill expressed disagreement or called these speakers out.”
Julia Friedland, the deputy press secretary for DeSantis, said in an emailed statement Tuesday that the court “was wrong to override” the wishes of state representatives who were elected by Floridians and acted on their behalf to “protect children.”
“We disagree with the Court’s erroneous rulings on the law, on the facts, and on the science,” Friedland said.She added that the governor’s office plans to appeal Hinkle’s ruling.
One of the plaintiffs, Jane Doe, the mother of Susan Doe, who is a 12-year-old trans girl, said the ruling “means I won’t have to watch my daughter needlessly suffer because I can’t get her the care she needs.”
“Seeing Susan’s fear about this ban has been one of the hardest experiences we’ve endured as parents,” she said in a statement Tuesday. “All we’ve wanted is to take that fear away and help her continue to be the happy, confident child she is now.”
The only portion of the law that has not been blocked is a prohibition on gender-affirming surgery for minors, which none of the plaintiffs challenged and Hinkle noted is “extraordinarily rare.” The opinion also didn’t address restrictions on surgery for trans adults since the adult plaintiff in the case was not seeking surgery.
Florida is among the 25 states that have restricted access to transition-related care for minors, and one of six that made it a felony to provide such care to minors. However, Hinkle previously ruled unconstitutional the portion of Florida’s law that would allow health care providers to be charged with a crime or subject to disciplinary action from a licensing board.
The plaintiffs in the Florida case were represented by LGBTQ advocacy groups GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Southern Legal Counsel, the Human Rights Campaign and Lowenstein Sandler LLP, a national law firm.
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBTQ advocacy group, celebrated the win on social media, noting that Florida’s law was the first in the nation to restrict care for trans adults in addition to minors.
“The state of Florida has shown blatant discriminatory intent toward transgender people, and today’s ruling makes clear that is not permissible,” Sarah Warbelow, the vice president of legal for the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, said in a statement. “There is no sound reason to deprive people of the ability to make best-practice, medically necessary healthcare decisions for themselves—especially when the trade-off is the heartache and distress of children and parents.”
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Jo Yurcaba
Jo Yurcaba is a reporter for NBC Out.
