A federal judge has struck down a Florida law that banned doctors from providing gender-affirming care to most kids. The law (SB 254) also created hurdles for adults to access care. Now, advocates say they hope more transgender patients will be able to get what they see as lifesaving care.
Simone Chriss is a lawyer on the case. She’s also the director of the transgender rights initiative at Southern Legal Counsel. She says some of the providers who offered that care had to close in the past year.
“Unfortunately, after SB 254 came out, we saw a ton of providers across the state shut down their clinics — stop providing any care to minors particularly," Chriss says.
The law blocked doctors from providing gender-affirming care to most minors and blocked any provider except doctors from prescribing things like hormone therapy to transgender adults — meaning nurse practitioners and physicians assistants couldn’t offer that care.
Chriss says the ruling reverses that, but she thinks it will take a while for care to catch up.
"I know a lot of APRNs and NPs have had to shift their practice and treat other diagnoses and other patients because they were not allowed to treat trans patients,” Chriss says.
“My hope is that as the news spreads about this is that all of the providers who just shut down or stopped treating trans patients because they were not allowed by law to treat them will resume that care so that everyone can resume seeing their trusted provider who prescribed them gender affirming care prior to this."
Gov. Ron DeSantis has spoken out against the ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle.
On Tuesday, the state took the first step in appealing with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Alabama, where judges have previously overturned a stay on an Alabama law banning gender-affirming care for minors.
“We’ll win that appeal," DeSantis said last week. "We may win it very quickly given that the judges have already adjudicated this case going forward.”
Chriss says the court has handed down a ruling that supported access to gender-affirming care. She says she believes her group has a strong argument.
“Even if they apply the standard that they applied in the Alabama case, we still win because we proved in trial that these bans are based on animus and bias and a motive to deter transgender people from being transgender as opposed to any legitimate justification or motive that the state could put forward," Chriss says.
Copyright 2024 WFSU
