Chris “Law Dork” Geidner

@chrisgeidner · Twitter ·

"The elephant in the room should be noted at the outset. Gender identity is real," U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle wrote, telling Florida to "put up or shut up." New, at @lawdorknews, today's big ruling against bans on gender-affirming medical care: https://www.lawdork.com/p/florida-ruling-trans-care-ban-minors

“The elephant in the room should be noted at the outset,” Hinkle wrote. “Gender identity is real.” What followed in the next two pages of the court’s opinion was as aggressive a ruling as we’ve seen in challenging state actions to limit gender-affirming medical care — backed up, again, by a seven-day bench trial over these issues. “The medical defendants, speaking through their attorneys, have admitted [gender identity is real]. At least one defense expert also has admitted it,” Hinkle wrote. Some people, however, believe that “transgender individuals have inappropriately chosen a contrary gender identity, male or female, just as one might choose whether to read Shakespeare or Grisham.” Because of this, he continued, those people tend to “oppose medical care that supports a person’s transgender existence.” The members of the medical boards defending the lawsuit, at least in court, are not among those people. “In this litigation,” Hinkle wrote, “the medical defendants have explicitly acknowledged that this view is wrong and that pushing individuals away from their transgender identity is not a legitimate state interest.” Nonetheless, “an unspoken suggestion running just below the surface in some of the proceedings that led to adoption of the statute and rules at issue—and just below the surface in the testimony of some of the defense experts—is that transgender identity is not real, that it is made up.” To that, Hinkle wrote: // Any proponent of the challenged statute and rules should put up or shut up: do you acknowledge that there are individuals with actual gender identities opposite their natal sex, or do you not? Dog whistles ought not be tolerated.