Florida families filed a motion challenging the state’s ban on medically necessary healthcare for their transgender children. They’re asking the court to halt the ban while their case proceeds. The seven parents told the federal district court that the policy unlawfully strips them of the right to make informed decisions about their children’s medical treatment & violates the equal protection rights of transgender youth by denying them medically necessary, doctor-recommended healthcare. The plaintiffs are represented by Southern Legal Counsel, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, the National Center for Lesbian Rights & the Human Rights Campaign. Simone Chriss, Director of Transgender Rights Initiative, Southern Legal Counsel stated, “These bans are already having devastating impacts on Florida families. Transgender adolescents are being denied access to critical medical care & parents are being forced to sit by & watch their children suffer preventable harm. The Florida Medical Boards & Surgeon General have not only failed to fulfill their own duty to protect the health & wellbeing of transgender youth in this state, but they have also blocked the parents of those youth from exercising their fundamental right to do so." Shannon Minter, Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights concluded, “Florida has crossed a dangerous line by letting this ban go into effect. Parents, not the government, should be in charge of directing their children’s healthcare. The state of Florida is interfering with family privacy & decision-making and children & parents are suffering because of it.” Similar bans on established medical care for transgender youth have been blocked by federal judges in Alabama & Arkansas.
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