Judge Sides With Families Fighting Florida’s Ban on Gender Care for Minors

The News

A federal judge in Florida ruled on Tuesday that three transgender children can be prescribed puberty blockers, despite a new state law that prohibits gender transition care for minors and adds new hurdles for adults who seek similar care.

The judge issued a preliminary injunction in response to an emergency request by three Florida families. They and others had sued the state in March over an administrative ban on gender transition care for minors, and then widened their suit to take in the new law after Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed it on May 17.

The plaintiffs had urged Judge Robert L. Hinkle of Federal District Court in Tallahassee specifically to block one part of the law that bars doctors and nurses from prescribing or administering transition-related medication to children, and another part that exposes medical providers to criminal liability and professional discipline for doing so.

“Gender identity is real,” Judge Hinkle wrote in his sharply worded ruling, adding that “proper treatment” includes mental health therapy that can be followed by hormone treatments and puberty blockers. “Florida has adopted a statute and rules that prohibit these treatments even when medically appropriate.”

He also wrote that the families who brought the lawsuit are “likely to prevail on their claim that the prohibition is unconstitutional.”

The injunction granted by Judge Hinkle does not apply to other aspects of the far-reaching legislation, which also bars gender-transition surgery for minors, alters child custody statutes to treat transition care as equivalent to child abuse, and forbids the use of state funds to pay for transition care.

Though the injunction directly protects only the three families that requested it, their lawyers interpreted it on Tuesday as possibly extending to other transgender minors throughout the state as well.

“The court addressed the specific question in front of it, but also issued a very strong ruling that says the bans are unlikely to survive constitutional scrutiny,” said Jennifer Levi, a lawyer for the plaintiffs and the senior director of transgender rights at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders.

She noted that Judge Hinkle’s 44-page ruling drew conclusions far beyond the scope of the three families in the case. “The power of the ruling is to make clear that the law is unconstitutional,” she said.