A federal judge today granted a preliminary injunction against the Florida law that bans puberty blockers and other gender-affirming care for transgender teens. In order to do this, the judge had to conclude the plaintiffs were likely to win their case on the merits when it goes to trial. He did so in no uncertain terms:
State action motivated by purposeful discrimination, even if otherwise lawful, violates the Equal Protection Clause....The statute and rules at issue 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.
The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their equal-protection claim.
Judge Robert Hinkle ruled that Florida's law didn't survive even the low barrier of rational-basis scrutiny because the state was unable to show any reason that its interests would be affected by teens receiving appropriate and widely accepted medical treatment. The motivation for the law was not medical at all, nor did it have anything to do with children's safety. The motivation was primarily mere disapproval of trans people:
In support of their position, the defendants have proffered a laundry list of purported justifications for the statute and rules. The purported justifications are largely pretextual....The state’s disapproval of transgender status—of a person’s gender identity when it does not match the person’s natal sex—was a substantial motivating factor in enactment of the challenged statute and rules.
Hinkle's ruling is not nuanced. He is repulsed by Florida's intolerance and doesn't hesitate to say so ("There has long been, and still is, substantial bigotry directed at transgender individuals. Common experience confirms this.") It is not clear if an appellate court will be willing to share his uncompromising view, but in the meantime, at least, Florida's law is blessedly on hold.
Not a moment too soon. I've been on hormones since 1978 and now, after nearly half a century, the bigots in Tallahassee are trying to take them away and think they know better than my doctors. When I go to other countries, I often find they're not only freely available, but over-the-counter without Rx. Only America among advance democracies has chosen to wage this insane war by extremist evangelical Christian nationalists and their allies against transgender people and gender affirming care. But it's too soon to celebrate here in FL - the appeal will prbly be worse.
As an older transgender person (meaning no offense when I say older, I just mean not a teenager 🙂 ) what are your opinions on the recent increase in rates of identification as trans among young people
I have concern that some young people have malaise or depression, and latch onto gender dysphoria as the cause of their problems. 2 of my friends have transitioned, and they had serious depression for years and years, cutting and everything, one tried to kill themself
I have no problems for people who make medical decisions with eyes wide open but the unquestioning acceptance of testimony as fact from teenagers who, let’s be honest, can be pretty stupid (not exclusive to trans teenagers of course) is concerning
I’m not tuned into transgender communities very closely. I’m curious what your opinions
When you lift the barriers of oppression and discrimation, everything jumps to their base rates: abortion, divorce, pre-marital sex, etc. were all rare when we were young. Today? OMG. Left-handed-ness jumped from 2% of kids to 14% over the decades when schools stopped punishing kids and tying their hands behind their backs to force them to be right-handed. It is the same with gender. Thanks for asking.
I can appreciate your concern. I suggest a thought experiment. Could you, yourself, exist in the world 24-7 as a person of the other gender for as long as a week without thinking, "wow, this is too hard, it's just not worth it, I quit!"
I couldn't. I would be surprised if any cis person could.
I mean, I know of a few people who transitioned mistakenly. I know of a few others who detransitioned because there was so much pushback from family/work, not because they changed their minds.
If one person has an allergic reaction to penicillin, though, we don't stop using penicillin. We just try to be more careful with whom we use it on.
Thank you
The treatment itself is less widely accepted. Multiple European states including such notable rightwing hell holes like the Netherlands and Finland are going to a more nuanced stance.
I want to stress that this in no way prohibits treatment but there is increasing evidence that individualized care between patients and providers is a more appropriate way to go where hormonal therapy and puberty blockers are options among several others and may be inappropriate first line treatments for some adolescents.
Yes, but Republicans are adament that a group of conservative white men are better suited to make "one size fits all" health care decisions than the individual and their health care provider.
Yes it absolutely sucks that we cannot address medical questions through the lens of science and compassion in this country because a critical mass of republicans just want to ban people they don't like.
Deleted prior comment
Regarding this:
"The motivation for the law was not medical at all, nor did it have anything to do with children's safety."
I don't know anything about this law in Florida, but in the broader context of trans-related care for minors, medical concerns for the safety of children strike me as entirely legitimate.
From Jon Chait @ NY Mag: "A new book by Hannah Barnes describes how the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock clinic, the United Kingdom’s only dedicated youth gender-identity clinic, routinely put children on puberty blockers with inadequate assessment. Barnes reports how the clinic responded to demands by activists that it quickly affirm and treat the stated gender identity of every child, rather than engage in careful diagnosis. She describes an atmosphere of fear preventing staff from voicing, or maintaining, their doubts about the soundness of its methods"
From the Economist: "Chloe Cole, an 18-year-old who has become a voice for detransitioners in America, is suing Kaiser Permanente, a large American medical provider, for medical negligence. Ms Cole decided at the age of 12 that she was a boy, was put on puberty blockers and testosterone at 13 and underwent a double mastectomy at 15, before changing her mind and detransitioning at 16."
From the NYT magazine: "Others decide they want to fully detransition and return to their cis identities. Grace Lidinsky-Smith, who is 28, has written about her regret over taking testosterone and having her breasts removed in her early 20s."
These situations certainly seems to cry out for caution regarding the medical treatment of minors. And this desire for caution is by no means limited to Republicans/conservatives, as the Washington Post indicates:
"Or consider a recent KFF/Washington Post poll on transgender issues, in which most Americans said they opposed puberty-blocking treatments for children."
As best as I can tell, Liberals/Leftists need to be very wary of groupthink on this issue. There are indeed very legitimate concerns which appear to be shared by a majority of citizens.
Returning again to Jon Chait (a Liberal pundit): "Many of the outcomes Reed claims to have witnessed are unbearably sad: Children rushed onto hormones, or into surgery, coping with painful side effects or (in one case) asking to have their breasts back ... And her account jibes with reporting in the U.S. Reuters, The Atlantic, and the New York Times that have all revealed deep concerns within the provider community, a division over best practices, and pressure applied to skeptics. If Reed’s allegations are proved correct, it will take its place among the gravest medical scandals in modern American history."
Clearly, dismissing concerns about the medical treatment of transgender minors as little or nothing more than bigotry is simply inaccurate.
The Florida law is motivated by DeSantis' lust to be president. It has nothing to do with developing reasonable protocols for treating gender dysphoria. The sad truth is Florida legislatures don't give a dam about medical concerns for the safety of kids, or for pregnant women for that matter.
Oh boy. Here we go. Look, yes there are an vanishingly small number of cases where people decide that their transition was the wrong decision and in some cases, it was when they were young. Now time for some facts.
It's literally like three cases that anti-trans groups keep re-circulating, two of which are from the UK, not the US. So you have like three people who claim they were coerced into transitioning or something against...thousands upon thousands, if not millions, all over the world who can testify that being allowed access to gender affirming care saved their lives and let them become happy, productive adults living as their true selves. That somehow doesn't count, though. I'm sorry, but Chait and others like him are absolutely, completely full of shit when they assert that forcing 13 year-olds to have mastectomies is somehow mainstream best practices in the field. Full. Of. Shit. It's the equivalent of pointing to Bernie Madoff in order to suggest that maybe antisemites have a point when they suggest Jews are all corrupt criminals obsessed with money. "Hey, there's clearly a problem with Jews and finance is all I'm saying! This guy stole billions! Is it unreasonable to ask what other Jewish bankers are doing with your money?" Or I'm sure you could find someone who was advised to undergo cancer treatments when it turned out they never had cancer and now they suffer from lasting after effects of the radiation treatment or something. So we should scotch all cancer treatment?
Yes, as the parent of a trans child, I'm a little pissy about this. The anti-trans laws being passed now have nothing to do with caring about kids and everything to do with cramming fundamentalist dogma down our throats and marginalizing/persecuting kids who are already putting up with a world of shit just trying to be who they are. Full stop. The fact that Chait and Andrew Sullivan and others like them are trying to carry water for it is both sad and infuriating.
I may be misreading you, but the impression that I take away from your response is that you're trying to shut down the conversation. And, I'll be blunt: if my impression is correct, that would make your reference to fundamentalists who try to cram dogma down our throats into quite an ironic statement.
The main point I'm trying to make in my post above is that this is indeed a topic that needs to be scrutinized. And we should be careful not to reflexively dismiss concerns about trans activists just because Republicans/Conservatives are trying to turn them into a culture war topic. That approach in itself would be a logical fallacy of sorts.
In fact, in my post above, I did my best to stick with writers or publications that I understand as generally Liberal, thereby trying to avoid any dismissive comments about Republicans. You seem to attempt such a response anyway, but your conflation of Jon Chait with Andrew Sullivan may actually back up my own assertions. Those two occupy very different ends of the sociopolitical spectrum, and yet they do seem to share concerns about trans activists. And that fact indicates that this is a topic that transcends partisan loyalties or tribal affiliations.
Yes, this is a topic that needs to be scrutinized. No it is not a topic that needs to be demonized, nor do we need knee jerk self-serving absolutist authoritarian legislation to deal with it, or any other matter.
The more loony you get the easier it is for other loonies to look “normal”
Yes, DeSantis is a kook. That’s why he clings to his anti-woke screed so hard. If you cede the reasonable position (not that the ban is reasonable, I would say the reasonable position is yet unoccupied) to otherwise crazy people, you give ‘em a chance to look normal
Plenty of politicians got f’ed when their “abolish the police” comments from 2020 caught up to them. Same sort of story
Not hard to find a reasonable middle ground on trans stuff that like 70% of the country would shrug and say “ok” for, all I’m saying
+1
Then why are you acting so looney? Oh -- a light dawns -- you think you get to be the sole arbiters of what is and is not 'looney'. And you expect the rest of us to accept that arrogation as it is only your natural due, amirite 😉
“I may be misreading you, but the impression that I take away from your response is that you're trying to shut down the conversation.”
It’s appropriate to shut down conversations that are inherently immoral and inhumane. Like if somebody wrote “we should consider all the pros and cons of killing off the sick before they overwhelm the healthy with medical costs” or “how about we incarcerate all black people and see if that helps us reduce the crime rate,” it’s totally appropriate for the entire world to shun them into silence.
The opinion that “well if 3 people regret their transition or 15 students nationwide were born male but are now competing in women’s sports, then it’s totally appropriate for 500+ laws to be passed to erase transgender people from public society” is edging pretty close to the line for decency in public discourse.
And we all know the best way to discuss a topic like this is to have the state ban treatment outright.
And if you think Sullivan and Chait have widely different political opinions, then you aren't paying attention.
That's the tell right there. Or rather, the tell is avoiding the actual topic, which is the radical increase in this type of proposed legislation.
I am also the parent of a trans person. People I know from my school days are posting things like "All trans people should be shot" on Facebook. That is a quote.
This is the environment we are in. Yeah, you want calm reasonable debate. Me too. See above.
It's about 2% from what I've read. And whatever else those people are people and they deserve to both be heard and helped if possible.
But also a MUCH wider and younger group than even 15 years ago is involved in the modern movement so old studies themselves may or may not be relevant.
Thanks so much! I'm SO tired of having to repeat this endlessly. And please keep your PISSY! And thank you*** for standing by your child. I have a book coming out of interviews with parents in red states who stood by their trans* kids and I tell every one of them: "If I'd had just one parent like you my whole life would be different."
This is so, so, SO good. This is the exact thing we need. I've been thinking of trying to make a website with stories like this.
Yes, well we're all very worried about irreversible decisions by trans kids. Studies show that almost 5,000 teens are getting breast implants yearly, and about the same number are getting breast reductions. That’s about 10,000 annually year—and the number of teens doing so continues growing rapidly. Attitudes have become so casual that some teens are requesting top surgery as a “graduation present” when they complete high school.
Some teens are now asking for top surgery as a “graduation present” when they complete high school.
Medical procedures are not limited to bodies. up to 30,000 each year are also having surgeries to their faces to look more stereotypically feminine, procedures which are “ highly visible, irrevocable, and life-changing [and often] are motivated by body dysphoria, peer pressure, invidious internalized notions about race and ethnicity,” and of course “social expectations of ‘femininity.'”
In addition, for decades now, doctors have quietly giving tens of thousands of other girls as young as seven or eight years of age hormone blockers.
Oh wait - those are all CISGENDER kids. The number of trans* kids getting top surgery last year was 282 -- about 2% of the total. And the number of trans kids getting blockers and/or hormones is less than the number of cis kids getting the same treatments for precocious puberty. -- and at much** earlier ages.
But no one frets about those thousands of cisgender kids making "life-changing mistakes" or "being too young to know" because they don't challenge the gender binary.
Got it in one. They don't give a damn about the science, nor do they give a damn about the personal autonomy of others. Despicable people every last one of them until they prove otherwise. And yes, the burden of proof is on them and to my satisfaction, not on us and to theirs ... one of their perennial gotos they like to pull out of their bag of stupid rhetorical sallies.
It strikes you as 'entirely legitimate', eh? Tell me, what are your qualifications that you think your words should have any weight with anyone at all?
Where have all the tomboys gone, long time passing
Where have all the tomboys gone, long time ago
Where have all the tomboys gone, gone to gender affirming medical care every one
When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn
In short I refuse to admit that gender MUST be affirmed on the operation table but MAY NEVER be affirmed in a sentence, will not use the word "they" in the singular, and am glad I didn't allow my daughter's "honest gender identity" to be "medically affirmed" when as an adolescent she was convinced she was trans (and so is she). Really gender isn't all that clearcut and both the trans movement and the far right are wrong to say it is (in opposite senses, but still clearcut).
Yes, well we're all very worried about irreversible decisions by trans kids.
No, we're not all verry worried, or at least, these dishonest gits ain't. They'd be just as against those types of decisions if the supporting medical procedures were completely and seemlessly reversible. All they've got are stupid and insulting word games that we supposedly have to take seriously on pain of the accusation of hypocrisy. Well, I do take their words seriously ... as evidence of their continual abuse and flaunting of community standards.