Judge Strikes Down Florida Ban on Transgender Minor Reaffirming Surgery

(OurNationNews.com) The administration of Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was dealt a legal loss recently after a federal judge struck down a Florida law banning gender-affirming surgery and care for minors.

According to a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Hinkle, both the state government’s law and rules adopted by the Florida medical board that prohibit minors from getting access to puberty blockers and hormones, as well as other gender-affirming treatments, are “unconstitutional.”

In his 105-page decision, Judge Hinkle wrote that the state of Florida passed and imposed a law banning gender-affirming care for minors even when such treatments were “medically appropriate.” The judge also deemed that the passage of the law was driven by an “anti-transgender animus” harbored by many members of the state’s Republican-dominated legislature, a notion that sided with claims by lawyers representing trans groups that challenged the law.

Hinkle also called a reported issued by the Sunshine State’s Agency for Health Care Administration “deeply flawed” and “bias-driven” in its claims that Medicaid coverage should not extend to gender-affirming treatments and procedures for minors since they were considered to be “experimental” in nature. Furthermore, Hinkle wrote that the medical board rules banning minors from receiving gender-affirming treatments had “no medical justification” and were simply and obvious attempt at impeding patients from getting the gender-affirming care they supposedly need.

The judge also chided the state government for making claims that children have been “castrated or mutilated” in order to affirm their preferred gender identify, saying that such claims could likely just be “political hyperbole”. Lawyers for the state of Florida also reportedly admitted in court that there was no basis for the comments.

In addition to throwing out the ban on gender-affirming treatments for trans kids, Hinkle also rejected rules that required adults seeking the same healthcare treatments to only obtain it from physicians and not from any other healthcare providers.