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Tipsheet

Federal Judge Issues a Ruling in Florida State Law Banning Trans 'Medical Care' to Minors

AP Photo/John Hanna


On Tuesday, Clinton-appointed Judge Robert Hinkle, a federal judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida, issued a preliminary injunction against Florida state law in his ruling for Doe v. Ladapo. The law in question, SB 254, was part of the Let Kids Be Kids bill package, which Ron DeSantis, the state's Republican governor, signed into law last month. SB 254 in particular protects children from irreversible surgeries that involve sterilization and genital mutilation. 

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As DeSantis said about the movement pushing such procedures during last month's bill signing, "you have a movement amongst rogue elements of the medical establishment that is basically [pushing] the mutilation of minors. They're trying to do sex change operations on minors, giving them things like puberty blockers and doing things that are irreversible. And that is not based on science, that is not based on evidence."

While Judge Hinkle is garnering attention for his strongly-worded ruling, and leftist groups are celebrating the move, the governor's office has emphasized that the ruling is narrow. 

"This injunction is extremely limited in scope. In this case, a single judge has decided that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones should be made available to three young children. Florida's law otherwise remains in effect," DeSantis' Press Secretary Jeremy Redfern explained in a statement to Townhall.

Hinkle found that the plaintiffs "are likely to prevail on their claim that the prohibition is unconstitutional," with those plaintiffs involving "an 11-year-old transgender girl," an "eight-year-old transgender boy," and "an 11-year-old transgender girl."

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The 44-page ruling often read like an activist screed at times. In addition to using terms like "transgender males" to refer to biological girls and "transgender females" to refer to biological boys, the term "cisgender" is used to describe the overwhelming majority of people who do not experience gender dysphoria as the plaintiffs do. 

"Where there is bigotry, there are usually—one hopes, always—opponents of bigotry. It is hardly surprising that doctors who understand that transgender identity can be real, not made up—doctors who are willing to provide supportive medical care—oppose anti-transgender bigotry," Hinkle also writes at one point when addressing claims about “Bias in medical organizations.”

The so-called "medical care" that involves hormone therapy and puberty blockers that cause health concerns, as well as genital mutilation and sterilization is described in the ruling as "medical care that supports a person’s transgender existence."

"Gender identity is real. Those whose gender identity does not match their natal sex often suffer gender dysphoria. The widely accepted standard of care calls for evaluation and treatment by a multidisciplinary team. Proper treatment begins with mental-health therapy and is followed in appropriate cases by GnRH agonists and cross-sex hormones," the ruling concluded with. "Florida has adopted a statute and rules that prohibit these treatments even when medically appropriate. The plaintiffs are likely to prevail on their claim that the prohibition is unconstitutional. And they have met the other prerequisites to a preliminary injunction."

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The governor's office is not backing down, though. "We obviously disagree with the judge's ruling. We will continue fighting against the rogue elements in the medical establishment that push ideology over evidence and protect against mutilating our kids," Redfern also told Townhall.

DeSantis has spoken up at length against the movement to target children who may be experiencing gender dysphoria. 

"It's sad that we're even having to discuss this. The mutilation of minors who are undergoing these sex change operations by these really rogue ideological physicians, and we’ve had heartbreaking testimony from people that have gone through this when they were minors," DeSantis also said last month. "Now they’re adults and this is something they are now having to overcome really for the rest of their lives because irreversible changes were made. We banned this administratively last year through our medical board so if a medical doctor did this, they lose the license in Florida, which is appropriate," he added about another move Florida had taken. 

"But we felt you had to do more, I mean if you’re taking off the private parts of some 15-year-old kid, you know you should go to jail for that. This is just totally unacceptable. One of the things we did in that bill though, is we’re giving the victims the ability to sue the physicians. So if you’ve gone through this as a 16-year-old or a 15-year-old, now you’re 24 or 25 and you have all this irreversible damage, you bring suit against them because they violated the Hippocratic Oath, they put their ideology ahead of evidence-based medicine, and we just think that’s fundamentally wrong in the state of Florida," he also declared. 

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