Judge curbs Fla. probe into U.S. medicine's trans treatment standards
Source: Washington Post
A legal battle over Florida’s ban on Medicaid spending for gender-affirming medical care spilled into Washington on Thursday as a federal judge partially granted an urgent request by 18 American medical and mental health groups to quash subpoenas sent to them by the state after they opposed the prohibition.
The professional associations accused Florida of targeting members such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association and the Endocrine Society after they expressed the widely accepted medical view that care such as puberty blockers, hormones and gender transition surgery can be appropriate treatment for transgender youth and adults.
The groups spoke out last fall in support of a lawsuit filed by four transgender patients and their parents to overturn the ban in federal court in Tallahassee. But the organizations said state officials responded with a “highly inappropriate and invasive” fishing expedition for internal documents and communications about their policy positions. They accused the state of hunting for “supposed internal dissent” and bias in the service of an attack on the guidelines and credibility of the groups “from the inside-out.”.....
The court fight and Thursday’s ruling underscored how aggressively Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and his administration are pressing a state attack on transgender medical treatment, a wedge-issue selected by conservative politicians in the nation’s culture wars, with not just transgender patients and their families in the crosshairs, but also increasingly doctors and the medical establishment.
The lawsuit was filed in Florida after the state’s Medicaid agency ended funding for gender transition care in August, joining Texas and Alabama, and saying “only treatments that are found to be safe, effective, and that meet medical necessity criteria may be covered.” The state’s politically appointed Board of Medicine has since become the first to try to ban health-care professionals that it licenses from providing such treatment to minors, threatening violators with penalties, including loss of their medical license.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/26/florida-trans-treatment-lawsuit/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
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