A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a part of a new Florida law that bans transgender procedures for minors in Florida amid ongoing litigation.
The judge, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, sided with the plaintiffs. His decision says that three children who seek to transition can continue receiving treatment. The decision is narrowly focused on the three, whose parents brought the lawsuit on their behalf.
With regard to SB 254, Hinkle’s Tuesday ruling focused on its language involving minors, specifically on the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. The ruling doesn’t address other language in the law that affects adults’ access to transgender procedures.
The preliminary injunction means the three children can continue to receive puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to deal with their gender dysphoria.
Hinkle said that the three children in the lawsuit will “suffer irreparable harm” if they cannot begin puberty blockers adding that the treatment “will affect the patients themselves, nobody else, and will cause the defendants no harm.”
Governor’s Office Responds
DeSantis’s office issued a statement saying that SB 254 will continue to be enforced, with the exception of the three children, who are ages 8, 11, and 11.“We will continue fighting against the rogue elements in the medical establishment that push ideology over evidence,” said Jeremy Redfern, the press secretary of the Florida governor’s office, in a statement via The Associated Press.
Simone Chriss, a lawyer for Southern Legal Counsel representing the parents, said she hopes that regardless of DeSantis’ position, state attorneys won’t prosecute doctors for providing treatment “that is aligned with every major medical organization—not a rogue few, but all of them.”
Judge’s Opinion
In his 44-page opinion Tuesday, Hinkle wrote the transgender procedures bans for minors “were motivated in substantial part by the plainly illegitimate purposes of disapproving transgender status and discouraging individuals from pursuing their honest gender identities.”“This was purposeful discrimination against transgenders,” he added. “The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their equal-protection claim.”
Hinkle said the plaintiffs are also “likely to prevail on their parental-rights claim.” The parents argued that the due process clause protects a parent’s right to control a child’s medical treatment, although the defendants had argued that such a right doesn’t give them a right to insist on treatment that’s prohibited on other grounds.
“Quite so. If the state could properly prohibit the treatments at issue as unsafe, parents would have no right to override the state’s decision,” Hinkle said in addressing the defendants’ argument. But, he said, “there is no rational basis, let alone a basis that would survive heightened scrutiny, for prohibiting these [transgender] treatments in appropriate circumstances.”
The judge said that gender identity “is real” and that the widely accepted standard of care for gender dysphoria “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,” he wrote.
“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.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the Florida governor’s office for further comment.
