Federal court strikes down Florida transgender care ban. What it could mean for Idaho | Opinion
A federal district court Tuesday permanently blocked Florida from enforcing a law that banned medical care for transgender adolescents and restricted it for transgender adults.
Florida’s law is similar to Idaho’s law, which Republican state legislators passed in 2023 to ban gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers and hormone treatments.
The ACLU of Idaho is suing the state on behalf of two plaintiffs, and the case is pending.
The ruling in Florida could be a good sign for opponents of Idaho’s ban.
“It’s a tremendous victory for transgender people in Florida and across the country,” Chris Stoll, senior staff attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which brought the suit in Florida, told the Idaho Statesman in a phone interview. “It’s a very clear statement that these laws have absolutely no basis in medical science and really are being enacted for political purposes, unrelated to the provision of quality health care to young people.”
The Florida court ruling hinges on the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law, finding that Florida’s law was motivated by disapproval of transgender people, and violated the equal protection rights of transgender individuals and of transgender minors’ parents.
That was the same conclusion that U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill came to in December when he temporarily blocked Idaho’s law from going into effect.
“Time and again, these cases illustrate that the 14th Amendment’s primary role is to protect disfavored minorities and preserve our fundamental rights from legislative overreach,” Winmill wrote at the time. “That was true for newly freed slaves following the Civil War. It was true in the 20th century for women, people of color, interracial couples and individuals seeking access to contraception. And it is no less true for transgender children and their parents in the 21st century.”
Florida’s district court echoed that point, noting that “some transgender opponents invoke religion to support their position, just as some once invoked religion to support their racism or misogyny.”
“Transgender opponents are of course free to hold their beliefs,” the court wrote. “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.”
Unfortunately, in Idaho’s case, the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court in April allowed Idaho’s ban to go into effect, leaving transgender teens seeking gender-affirming care in limbo while the case is pending.
“I felt really kind of hopeless,” Liliana Rauer, 17, told the Idaho Statesman’s Ian Max Stevenson about learning of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Cases in other states, such as Montana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas and North Dakota, are making their way through their respective U.S. district courts. A federal judge in Arkansas struck down that state’s ban last year.
The Associated Press found that many of these bills are simple copy-and-paste legislation from national anti-transgender organizations.
Stoll suspects the Florida case will be appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the case ultimately could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
But in the meantime, this week’s ruling was a clear victory.
“This is a clear message to states that simply passing laws to express disapproval of transgender people is something that’s going to be reviewed and looked at closely by the courts and will not be allowed to stand,” Stoll said. “It’s not a legitimate act by the government to pass a law like this simply because of disapproval of transgender people.”
Unfortunately, it looks as if Idaho is once again spending taxpayer dollars trying to defend a Republican-passed law that ultimately will be found unconstitutional. Although given the political nature of today’s Supreme Court, maybe not.
