Trans Florida Update January 2024
by mike morse (they/he) 1/9/2024
Florida Congress is back in session, and attacks on trans people are once again at the forefront. On January 4, Florida’s SB 254 officially went into effect, essentially creating a full restriction of transgender medical care. Since the summer, trans activists, citizens, and their allies have shown up to Board of Medicine (BoM) meetings to fight for the right to easy, seamless medical care. SB 254 mandates all medical providers go over a new informed consent form, created by Florida’s BoM, in order to begin or resume gender affirming care. All summer, the Board prolonged the creation of the form for as long as possible, keeping youth and adults from receiving medication refills, and added as many roadblocks and alternative solutions to life-saving gender affirming treatment (such as counseling aka conversion therapy). An explanation of the final version of the informed consent form and why it is ridiculous and unnecessary can be found here.
The other big component of the bill is that nurse practitioners (NP’s) are no longer allowed to prescribe hormones (previously, 80% of gender affirming hormone prescriptions in the state of Florida were written by NP’s) — now only medical doctors (MD’s) and doctors of osteopathy (DO’s) can prescribe, if they are willing. I suspect many MD’s and DO’s who did not previously take on patients for gender affirming treatment aren’t going to suddenly start now, with questions of their job security in the air. As of today, I have no doctor who can refill my testosterone prescription. Luckily, I’ve got just under three months worth left in my stockpile, but after that I’m shit out of luck unless I can find a medical doctor to accept me as a new gender affirming treatment client. I’m not even new to hormones — I’m three years into testosterone therapy — yet I’m months away from losing access entirely. I’ve reached out to a few health organizations outside the state that have previously served Florida, but they’re all very hesitant and are currently not taking clients from this state.
Now that Florida Congress has resumed, a whole slew of new anti-trans bills are being introduced. The most drastic one was just proposed on January 2, HB 1233, and it would reject any driver’s license issued by the State of Florida under any sex other than the sex listed on the individual’s birth certificate. This means any trans person who has gone through a name and/or sex marker change on the legal documents have the possibility of having their license revoked. The bill does not claim it will revert name changes — therefore some trans people may be allowed to keep their license under their real name but will be forced to revert their sex marker back to their sex assigned at birth. Additionally, anyone requesting a new or replacement ID, whether trans or cisgender, will be required to sign an affidavit swearing that the sex they are registering under matches their sex assigned at birth. This will just compile a trans registry for the State (there will be a long list of names who don’t match the sex they are being forced to mark), which could then have the potential to be used to reinforce the heinous bathroom ban (SB 1674) that was passed and enacted last summer.
Additionally, the bill proposes that all schools and other public institutions that collect demographic information for the purposes of preventing discrimination to compile a list of all students/people and their assigned sex at birth, and provide this list to the State. Creating such trans registries will merely be weaponized.
Another proponent of this bill is that any health insurance companies that provide services in the state of Florida are now required to mandate an additional premium for plans that include gender affirming treatment (GAT). Furthermore, all plans that allow GAT must also cover detransition processes, and “other psychological treatments”, which has become a conservative code for reparative/conversion therapy. Insurance plans within Florida must also have tiered plan options with options that do NOT allow for GAT, essentially legally categorizing transness as a costly, pre-existing medical condition.
Finally, the wording of this bill also permits discrimination on the basis of gender, by removing any legal definition of gender outside of sex. The bill even defines “woman and girl” to mean “biological female” and “men and boy” to mean “biological male”. Sex based protections are only available for your sex assigned at birth, and gender based protections are no longer existent. Florida law already defines “males” and “females” by one’s reproductive system at birth. Trans people will no longer have legal discrimination protections any more in Florida. The bill has literally been nicknamed the “what is a woman act”, which in itself endangeres trans people, especially trans women, throughout the state. Additionally, like almost all other anti-trans legislation, the bill essentially illegitimizes the existence of intersex people, providing only one line stating that people “born with a medically verifiable diagnosis of a disorder in sex development” are protected under the American Disabilities Act.
Another bill that was proposed earlier this week, HB 1135, defines “grooming” in such a way that would issue a felony charge of up to 15 years to anyone who “encourages” or “prepares’’ sexual behavior in children 16 and under. (Makes me wonder — does this mean sex ed in schools will be formally banned? Not that Florida had effective sex ed to begin with.) The wording is purposefully vague, and although it makes no specific mention of lgbtq+ subjects, it reads in a way that will lead to the cancellations of drag events, queer children’s events, and more, due to fear and uncertainty of how far this bill stretches. The bill doesn’t need to be explicitly anti-lgbt; it’s obviously written with that goal in mind. Last summer, SB 1428 attempted to ban drag events from allowing children to be present — but the bill was blocked due to it being unconstitutional. HB 1135 is so much worse. I worry about a local bookstore that I have been in community with, as they sell queer children’s books and regularly host children’s events, while also advertising as a lgbtq+ safe space and bookstore. With the wording of this proposed bill, the bookstore will likely either have to stop branding itself as queer, should they wish to continue hosting children’s events (for their own safety), or they will have to pull their lgbtq+ children’s books from their shelves, including the popular queer young adult graphic novel Gender Queer, a book specifically being targeted by this bill.
January 4 also introduced SB 1382, a bill which practically grants workplaces the right to misgender, deadname, and discriminate against trans employees. The bill prohibits employers from being required to use any name, sex, gender, or pronouns for an employee other than what is on their birth certificate. I interpreted the bill to even ban employees from sharing their actual name, gender, or pronouns, should they even want to. It also protects those who discriminate by banning any action taken against employees who are behaving off the basis of their “deeply-held religious or scientific beliefs”. Finally, the bill bans any non-profit or other organization that receives any funding from the state from requiring any training relating to gender, sexual orientation, etc. If this bill passes, trans people will de facto lose all workplace protections.
The final new bill I have heard of at this point is SB 1780. Just reading the initial draft of this bill, it should be deemed unconstitutional and blocked — but we can never be absolutely certain of that. This bill forbids any individual, publication, book, tv show, etc. from falsely defaming any public figure, even removing some journalistic privileges. It also restricts individuals from submitting claims of racism, sexism, homophobia, or transphobia — no claims can be made in any of these categories if the plaintiff (the person being charged)’s reasoning for their behavior is backed by their religious or scientific beliefs. Any allegations made under these grounds that can be proven false (or can be proven to be permitted due to religious or scientific beliefs) are subject to a fine of $35,000 for defaming the public figure that the charges were brought against. This concerns me greatly, as much of my writing and “unofficial reporting” discusses the transphobic rhetoric within the Florida legislation and governing bodies (such as the BoM). Although I do not believe I write anything false or misleading about the state of affairs in Florida, will I be at risk of “defaming” the state or those in power? Will the bill only apply to media that has been created after the date of signature, or will they go backwards and hunt people down who have made previous claims? It’s unclear to me how this will be enforced, and I do see this as one of the most unconstitutional bills, directly disregarding freedom of speech. We will see how this draft stands over the next few months before it is enacted to law.
This is just the start of the legislative session. These bills are merely in a draft state, and will be a matter of discussion for a few months before the proposed drafts become finalized. Even if these bills do become law, they will be amended somewhat from this initial version, and ideally some will be fought in the courts for being unconstitutional. Hopefully enough people will turn up to legislative sessions to speak out against these bills, but given how the summer session went, I would be very surprised if these bills do not pass, almost exactly as proposed. Now more than ever it is essential that the trans community, and their allies, band together and create community resources and social support. This battle is not one that can be fought in isolation.
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