TALLAHASSEE — A federal district court has permanently blocked Florida from enforcing a law that bans medical care for transgender adolescents and restricts it for transgender adults.
The ruling in Doe v. Ladapo found that Florida SB 254 and the related Boards of Medicine rules were motivated by disapproval of transgender people and violate the equal protection rights of transgender individuals and parents of transgender minors in Florida. Florida was the first state to pass a law restricting access to health care for transgender adults.
Today’s ruling (June 11) permanently blocks those restrictions as well as the ban on care for adolescents.
In issuing its ruling the court found the health care restrictions in SB 254 were motivated by disapproval of transgender people, not by science, and were unlawful.
The court wrote, “Transgender opponents are of course free to hold their beliefs. But they are not free to discriminate against transgender individuals just for being transgender. In time, discrimination against transgender individuals will diminish, just as racism and misogyny have diminished. To paraphrase a civil-rights advocate from an earlier time, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
— David Taffet