On the first day and in the first week of his second term, President Donald Trump issued two executive orders taking aim specifically at LGBTQ+ people while rescinding seven actions by the Biden-Harris administration that expanded rights and protections for the community.

As detailed by the Human Rights Campaign, the anti-trans order, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” would prohibit the federal government from recognizing people and populations whose birth sex does not match their gender identity, while facilitating discrimination against LGBTQ+ communities “in the workplace, education, housing, healthcare, and more.”

Additionally, the order directs the attorney general to allow “people to refuse to use a transgender or nonbinary person’s correct pronouns, and to claim a right to use single-sex bathrooms and other spaces based on sex assigned at birth at any workplace covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and federally funded spaces.”

The U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security are further instructed to stop issuing documents like passports, visas, and Global Entry cards that conflict with the new, restrictive definition of sex that excludes consideration of trans and gender diverse identities.

The order also would prohibit federal funding, including through grants and contracts, for any content that is believed to promote “gender ideology,” while implementing restrictions on the use of federal resources to collect data on matters concerning gender identity.

There would also be consequences for particularly vulnerable populations, such as rules prohibiting trans women from accessing domestic violence shelters, forcing trans women to be housed with men in prisons and detention facilities, and prohibiting correctional facilities from providing gender affirming healthcare of any kind.

The second executive order targeting LGBTQ+ people would end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the federal government. HRC points out that “The preamble to the order includes a mention of the Project 2025 trope ‘gender ideology,’ while the language does not actually define DEI — meaning that “confusion and differing understandings of what DEI entails are likely to extend the regulatory process and may, in the meantime, have a chilling effect on any efforts that could potentially be considered ‘DEI.'”

Of the Biden-era executive actions that were repealed, HRC called special attention to “President Biden’s directive to agencies to implement the Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex includes prohibitions of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The organization notes that the ruling, decided in 2020, remains binding precedent.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday directed State Department personnel to stop nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending for 90 days.

A copy of the directive that Politico obtained requires State Department staffers to immediately issue “stop-work orders” on nearly all “existing foreign assistance awards.”

President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 issued an executive order that paused U.S. foreign aid “for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.”  

“All department and agency heads with responsibility for United States foreign development assistance programs shall immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors pending reviews of such programs for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy, to be conducted within 90 days of this order,” it reads. “The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) shall enforce this pause through its apportionment authority.”

Politico reported Rubio’s directive is more expansive than the executive order, although it does not stop military aid to Egypt and Israel, emergency food assistance and “legitimate expenses incurred prior to the date of this.”  The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, is among the programs impacted.

“This is a matter of life or death,” said International AIDS Society President Beatriz Grinsztejn in a press release. “PEPFAR provides lifesaving antiretrovirals for more than 20 million people — and stopping its funding essentially stops their HIV treatment. If that happens, people are going to die and HIV will resurge.

The promotion of LGBTQ+ and intersex rights was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s foreign policy.

The decriminalization of consensual same-sex sexual relations was one of the previous White House’s priorities in these efforts. The U.S. Agency for International Development in 2023 released its first-ever policy for LGBTQ+- and intersex-inclusive development.

Rubio this week issued a directive that bans embassies and other U.S. diplomatic institutions from flying the Pride flag. A second directive that Rubio signed directs State Department personnel to “suspend” any passport application in which an “X” gender marker is requested.

“This guidance applies to all applications currently in progress and any future applications,” reads the directive. “Guidance on existing passports containing an ‘X’ sex marker will come via other channels.”

The directive stems from a sweeping executive order — “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” — that Trump signed on Monday after he took office. The president in his inaugural speech noted the federal government’s “official policy” is “there are only two genders, male and female.”

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences makes the annual announcement of Oscar nominations, it’s always a day of divisive opinions – but even the most divisive Oscar controversies of the past are bound to end up feeling like a pleasant chat over brunch compared with the one that has predictably erupted over yesterday’s revelation of the Academy’s slate of contenders, in which “Emilia Pérez” became not only the most-nominated film of the year, but the first to score a Best Actress nod for a transgender actor.

It’s a milestone that hardly comes as a surprise. The film’s star, Karla Sofía Gascón, has been considered a front-runner in the category throughout the awards season so far, already winning the Golden Globe for Best Lead Actress (Musical of Comedy) and snagging an equivalent nomination for the upcoming SAG Awards – whose membership also happens to represent the largest percentage of Academy voters, thereby making their choices a solid indicator of how things are going to go down on Oscar night. In any other year, apart from being noted as a historic first and inevitably ruffling a few conservative feathers, Gascón’s inclusion in the lineup would likely otherwise feel like business as usual.

That, however, was before the return of convicted felon Donald Trump to the White House. Days after the former reality show star signed an executive order proclaiming that the United States will henceforth legally recognize only “two genders” (justified in part by the invocation of “concrete reality,” whatever that is), it seems that Academy voters have a dissenting opinion – and suddenly, a simple Oscar nomination feels like an act of resistance against the government itself.

For those who have yet to see the film (which is now streaming on Netflix), “Emilia Pérez” is a sprawling musical drama in which Gascón portrays a powerful Mexican cartel boss who enlists an idealistic lawyer (Zoe Saldaña, also nominated for an Oscar, as Best Supporting Actress) to facilitate a gender transition, so that she can disappear from her brutal life of violent conflict and finally live freely as the true self she has always had to keep hidden. It’s an epic-length saga, blending multiple genres into a larger-than-life, unpredictable wild ride that both celebrates traditional cinematic conventions and shatters them.

In addition to the kudos for Gascón and Saldaña, the film – which, though its dialogue is mostly in Spanish, was produced in France, giving it the additional distinction of earning the highest number of nominations of any non-English-language movie in Oscar history – also earned its place among the 10 Best Picture contenders, where it competes against more traditionally styled favorites like “Conclave,” “Wicked,” and the Chalamet-as-Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” as well as “artsier” titles like “Anora” and “The Brutalist.” Additionally, filmmaker Jacques Audiard is nominated as director and co-screenwriter (with Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius, and Nicolas Livecchi, in the Adapted Screenplay category), with two nods in the Best Song category and a host of so-called “technical” awards to round out its whopping total of 13 – only one nomination fewer than the three films (All About Eve,” “Titanic,” and “La La Land”) currently tied at 14.

Other films on the Oscar roster also gathered a high tally; “The Brutalist,” Brady Corbett’s critically lauded examination of the “American Dream” through the experiences of a Holocaust survivor (Adrien Brody) on his way to becoming a celebrated architect in the mid-20th-century United States, got 10, as did John M. Chu’s blockbuster adaptation of “Wicked” (including one each for stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande). Among other multiple nominees are “Conclave,” “Anora,” and “A Complete Unknown,” along with “The Substance,” which earned a Best Actress nod for previous dark horse candidate Demi Moore as one of its total.

Other nominations of note: Colman Domingo, whose well-deserved Best Actor nomination for “Sing Sing” gives him another shot at becoming the first openly gay person to win in that category; a pair of nominations for literary adaptation “Nickel Boys,” a story of two Black American youths at an abusive reform school in 1960s Florida; a nomination for Isabella Rossellini, daughter of three-time-Oscar winner Ingrid Bergman and Italian cinema maestro Roberto Rossellini, as Best Supporting Actress for her role in “Conclave”; and the inclusion of “Memoir of a Snail,” a uniquely poignant Australian film which features (among other non-kid-friendly things) a pair of queer characters being subjected to conversion therapy, among the nominees for Best Animated Feature.

As always, there were snubs, too: egregiously, Daniel Craig, the star of Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” who was widely seen as a front runner, was shut out for a Best Actor nomination. Guadgnino, who also directed the bisexual tennis romance “Challengers” this year, saw both of his movies come up empty-handed; also left out was a Best Actress nod for Pamela Anderson’s breathtaking comeback turn in “The Last Showgirl,” despite promising buzz and a strong showing at previous awards ceremonies this season.

Nevertheless, while in other years these subjectively labeled hits and misses might be fodder for plenty of debate in the public forum, none of them are even a storm in a teacup compared with the uproar around “Emilia Pérez” – which thus far (at this writing, anyway) has focused on detracting from the merits of the film itself, rather than at its transgender star. We get it: “Emilia Pérez” is not a film for all tastes, so it’s not surprising that many film fans are appalled at the acclaim it has received.

Even so, thanks to the atmosphere of transphobic oppression that has been forced upon us by Trump and his extremist cronies, any discussion of the film and its nominations must now be considered with all one’s critical thinking skills, because any arguments, either for or against its worthiness, might merely be a smokescreen for a deeper agenda than defending a set of cinematic aesthetics.

For our part, of course, we celebrate the film for its bold inclusivity, as well as its fantastical exploration of not only gender, but justice, corruption, politics, and all the contradictory passions that make being human what it is. We also celebrate Gascón’s nomination and the significant historic impact it carries – particularly coming at this precarious moment in the American story.

As for Oscar night, we have no idea what to expect, so our only prediction about the ceremony on March 2 also serves as a bit of advice, courtesy a quote from a previous Oscar champion: “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

The Los Angeles Blade has obtained a copy of a new State Department policy that bans embassies and other U.S. diplomatic institutions from flying the Pride flag.

“Per the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024, only the United States of America flag is authorized to be flown or otherwise publicly displayed at U.S. facilities, both domestic and abroad, and featured in U.S. government content,” reads directive that Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed. “No symbol or affiliation marking other than those authorized by U.S. statute, the president, or the secretary may be displayed, projected, or exhibited at any U.S. facility, both domestic and abroad.”

The policy states the U.S. flag “unites all Americans under the universal principles of justice, liberty, and democracy.”

“These values, which are the bedrock of our great country, are shared by all American citizens, past and present,” it reads. “The U.S. flag is a powerful symbol of pride and it is fitting and respectful that only the U.S. flag be flown or displayed at U.S. facilities, both domestically and abroad and in accordance with Chapter 1 of 4 U.S. C. ‘The Flag.”

The policy’s only exception is the POW/MIA flag.

The previous administration banned Pride flags from flying at U.S. embassies. (The Blade in 2018 saw the Pride flag attached to the fence that surrounds the U.S. Embassy in Havana.)

The State Department in 2021 for the first time flew the Progress Pride flag. Then-Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and then-Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley are among those who helped raise it. Then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken in 2021 said American diplomatic installations could once again fly the Pride flag.

Former President Joe Biden last March signed a government spending bill with a provision that banned Pride flags from flying over U.S. embassies.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated.

A sweeping executive order that President Donald Trump issued on Monday bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers.

Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June 2021 announced the State Department would begin to issue gender-neutral passports and documents for American citizens who were born overseas.

Dana Zzyym, an intersex U.S. Navy veteran who identifies as nonbinary, in 2015 filed a federal lawsuit against the State Department after it denied their application for a passport with an “X” gender marker. Zzyym in October 2021 received the first gender-neutral American passport.

The State Department policy took effect on April 11, 2022.

“The secretaries of State and Homeland Security, and the director of the Office of Personnel Management, shall implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex,” reads Trump’s executive order.

The gender marker is among the provisions contained within Trump’s executive order titled “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.” Trump in his inaugural speech said the federal government’s “official policy” is “there are only two genders, male and female.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday told the NOTUS website the executive order is not retroactive and will not invalidate current passports with a gender-neutral gender marker.

“They can still apply to renew their passport — they just have to use their God-given sex, which was decided at birth,” said Leavitt. “Thanks to President Trump, it is now the official policy of the federal government that there are only two sexes — male and female.”

The Los Angeles Blade on Thursday obtained a memo that directs State Department personnel to “suspend any application requesting an ‘X’ sex marker and do not take any further action pending additional guidance from the department.”

“Please also suspend any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker from that defined in the executive order
pending further guidance,” it reads. “This guidance applies to all applications currently in progress and any future applications. Guidance on existing passports containing an ‘X’ sex marker will come via other channels.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed the memo.

LGBTQ advocates have expressed alarm in recent weeks, as Meta has taken steps to undermine protections for queer youth and apparently worked to appease the incoming conservative administration in Washington.

Meta, the parent company of popular social media and messaging companies Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is owned by Mark Zuckerberg, who was once considered to be an ally of the LGBTQ community.

Two weeks ago, the internet was afire with discussion of Liv, the now-deleted Instagram profile of a “proud black Queer momma of 2” AI made by Meta as part of its AI user dreams. 

Then, last week, independent tech journalist Taylor Lorenz revealed that Instagram had been blocking teens from searching LGBTQ-related content for months. 

This comes as no surprise to Celia Fisher, a professor of Psychology and the Marie Ward Doty University Chair in Ethics at Fordham University who has spent her career studying children and adolescent health, especially for marginalized groups like the LGBTQ community.

When speaking to the Washington Blade in November 2024 on TikTok, Fisher remarked that it was increasingly difficult to research the Meta platforms. Fisher and her team have used advertisements on social media to recruit youth for anonymous surveys for studies. “One of the advantages of social media is that you can reach a national audience,” she says.

The advertisements are specifically linked to keywords and popular celebrities to reach LGBTQ populations of youth.  When she spoke to the Bladeagain this week, she was not surprised to hear that keywords were being blocked from youth. “Now, there is a major barrier to being able to recruit when you are doing online studies.”

It makes her research—which has looked at the mental health of youth online, HIV prevention strategies, and COVID vaccine barriers—impossible. “If Meta prevents researchers from using the platform, then the research can’t be done,” she said. 

The search blocks are not just a threat to the research, they are a threat to youth. “Hiding those terms from youth means they can’t see that there is a community out there. That’s a tremendous loss, especially for transgender youth,” said Fisher.

Fisher suspects where the restrictions are coming from, not that Zuckerberg has been particularly opaque as he cozies up to the new administration. “I think there’s been a creeping fear on the part of companies not to do anything that might elicit the ire of more conservative politicians,” she said.

A Meta spokesperson told Lorenz that the restriction was a mistake. “It’s important to us that all communities feel safe and welcome on Meta apps, and we do not consider LGBTQ+ terms to be sensitive under our policies,” said the spokesperson.

Meta backtracked immediately; the next day the company removed longstanding anti-LGBTQ hate speech policies.

Zuckerberg announced large changes to the platform via video in which he sported a $900,000 watch. (More than 1 in 5 LGBTQ adults are living in poverty. More than 1 in 3 transgender adults are living in poverty.)

The changes, which eliminate independent fact-checking for a system similar to X’s “community notes,” have been highly critiqued by journalists and fact-checking organizations. Many experts see it as a “bow” to Trump.

Zuckerberg also noted that the platform would “remove restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are out of touch with mainstream discourse.” He directly linked the changes to the recent election. 

Those changes happened quickly. That same day GLAAD, an LGBTQ media monitoring non-profit, reported the changes to the hateful conduct policies. Changes include allowances for calling LGBTQ people mentally ill and the removal of prohibitions against the dehumanization of protected groups, among many. Notably, Meta’s guidelines include the right-wing transphobic dog whistle “transgenderism.” 

On Jan. 9, reporting from The Intercept and Platformer on internal training documents revealed the use of even more slurs. The t-slur against transgender people is now allowed on the sites with no restrictions. Phrases like—and this is a quoted example—”A trans person isn’t a he or she, it’s an it” are allowed on the sites with no restrictions.

Notably, the training manuals differentiate between different members of the LGBTQ community. For example, The Intercept found that the phrase “Lesbians are so stupid” would be prohibited while “trans people are mentally ill” would not be.

(These training manuals also include permissive use of racist and dehumanizing language for other marginalized groups.)

And then, as a cherry on top, Meta removed DEI programs and deleted the transgender and non-binary Messenger themes, on Jan. 10.

These changes are undeniably bad. Arturo Béjar, a former engineering director at Meta with expertise in online harassment, told the Associated Press, he is horrified by the changes.

“I shudder to think what these changes will mean for our youth, Meta is abdicating their responsibility to safety, and we won’t know the impact of these changes because Meta refuses to be transparent about the harms teenagers experience, and they go to extraordinary lengths to dilute or stop legislation that could help,” he said. 

Fisher, who has researched the effects of hate speech online on LGBTQ youths’ mental health, agrees that the results will be devastating. “We had many people who said they observed transgender harassment for others or were actually attacked themselves,” said Fisher. “This prevents people from wanting to come out online and to actually engage in those kinds of online communities that might be helpful to them.”

What is happening also confirms LGBTQ youths’ worst fears. “We’ve found that a major concern is that there would be an increased violation of civil rights and increased violence against LGBTQ individuals,” she said.

Fisher, a psychologist, sees this as “putting us back into the dark ages of psychiatry and psychology when LGBTQ individuals were seen as having some kind of a mental health problem or disorder.”

Fisher emphasized: “This kind of misinformation about mental illness is certainly going to be putting transgender people, especially at even greater risk than they were before.”

(This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.)

President Donald Trump, during his inaugural address on Monday, previewed some anti-trans executive orders he has pledged to sign, though it was not yet fully clear how and when they would be implemented.

“This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life,” he said. “Today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government, that there are only two genders, male and female.”

The president added, “I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories and social experiments, while on duty. It’s going to end immediately.”

After taking the oath of office inside the U.S. Capitol building, Trump was expected to sign as many as 200 executive orders.

On issues of gender identity and LGBTQ rights, the 47th president was reportedly considering a range of moves, including banning trans student athletes from competing and excluding trans people from the U.S. Armed Forces.

NBC News reported on Monday, however, that senior officials with the new administration pointed to two forthcoming executive orders — the official recognition of only two genders, and “ending ‘radical and wasteful’ diversity, equity and inclusion programs inside federal agencies.”

With respect to the former, in practical terms it would mean walking back the Biden-Harris administration’s policy, beginning in 2022, of allowing U.S. citizens to select the “x” gender marker for their passports and other official documents.

“The order aims to require that the federal government use the term ‘sex’ instead of ‘gender,’ and directs the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to ‘ensure that official government documents, including passports and visas, reflect sex accurately,'” according to NBC.

Additionally, though it was unclear what exactly this would mean, the first EO would take aim at the use of taxpayer funds for gender-transition healthcare, such as in correctional facilities.

The Human Rights Campaign in a press release Monday indicated that a “fulsome review of executive actions” is forthcoming, but the group’s President Kelley Robinson said, “Today, the Trump administration is expected to release a barrage of executive actions taking aim at the LGBTQ+ community instead of uniting our country and prioritizing the pressing issues the American people are facing.”  

“But make no mistake: these actions will not take effect immediately,” she said.

“Every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect in all areas of their lives,” Robinson said. “No one should be subjected to ongoing discrimination, harassment and humiliation where they work, go to school, or access healthcare. But today’s expected executive actions targeting the LGBTQ+ community serve no other purpose than to hurt our families and our communities.”

She continued, “Our community has fought for decades to ensure that our relationships are respected at work, that our identities are accepted at school, and that our service is honored in the military. Any attack on our rights threatens the rights of any person who doesn’t fit into the narrow view of how they should look and act. The incoming administration is trying to divide our communities in the hope that we forget what makes us strong. But we refuse to back down or be intimidated.”

“We are not going anywhere. and we will fight back against these harmful provisions with everything we’ve got,” Robinson said.

The U.S. Senate on Monday confirmed U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to become the next secretary of state.

The vote took place hours after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Monday advanced Rubio’s nomination before senators approved it by a 99-0 vote margin.

The promotion of LGBTQ+ and intersex rights abroad was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s foreign policy.

Rubio in 2022 defended Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed. The Florida Republican that year also voted against the Respect for Marriage Act that passed with bipartisan support.

Rubio during his Jan. 15 confirmation hearing did not speak about LGBTQ+ rights.

GLAAD has identified and catalogued LGBTQ+-inclusive content or references to HIV that appear on WhiteHouse.gov and the websites for several federal government agencies, anticipating that these pages might be deleted, archived, or otherwise changed shortly after the incoming administration takes over on Monday.

The organization found a total of 54 links on WhiteHouse.gov and provided the Washington Blade with a non-exhaustive list of the “major pages” on websites for the Departments of Defense (12), Justice (three), State (12), Education (15), Health and Human Services (10), and Labor (14), along with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (10).

The White House web pages compiled by GLAAD range from the transcript of a seven-minute speech delivered by President Joe Biden to mark the opening of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center to a readout of a roundtable with leaders in the LGBTQ+ and gun violence prevention movements and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s 338-page FY2024 budget summary, which contains at least a dozen references to LGBTQ+-focused health equity initiatives and programs administered by agencies like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Just days after Trump took office in his first term, news outlets reported that LGBTQ+ related content had disappeared from WhiteHouse.gov and websites for multiple federal agencies.

Chad Griffin, who was then president of the Human Rights Campaign, accused the Trump-Pence administration of “systematically scrubbing the progress made for LGBTQ+ people from official websites,” raising specific objection to the State Department’s removal of an official apology for the Lavender Scare by the outgoing secretary, John Kerry, in January 2017.

Acknowledging the harm caused by the department’s dismissal of at least 1,000 employees for suspected homosexuality during the 1950s and 60s “set the right tone for the State Department, he said, adding, “It is outrageous that the new administration would attempt to erase from the record this historic apology for witch hunts that destroyed the lives of innocent Americans.”

In response to an inquiry from NBC News into why LGBTQ+ content was removed and whether the pages would return, a spokesperson said “As per standard practice, the secretary’s remarks have been archived.” However, NBC noted that “a search of the State Department’s website reveals not much else has changed.”

Parties in Doe v. Ladapo, a case challenging Florida’s ban on healthcare for transgender youth and restrictions on the medical interventions available to trans adults, presented oral arguments on Wednesday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.

The case was appealed by defendants representing the Sunshine State following a decision in June 2024 by Judge Robert Hinkle of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, who found “the law and rules unconstitutional and unenforceable on equal protection grounds,” according to a press release from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which is involved in the litigation on behalf of the plaintiffs.

The district court additionally found the Florida healthcare ban unconstitutional on the grounds that it was “motivated by purposeful discrimination against transgender people,” though the ban and restrictions will remain in effect pending a decision by the appellate court.

Joining NCLR in the lawsuit are attorneys from GLAD Law, the Human Rights Campaign, Southern Legal Counsel, and the law firms Lowenstein Sandler and Jenner and Block.

“As a mother who simply wants to protect and love my child for who she is, I pray that the Eleventh Circuit will affirm the district court’s thoughtful and powerful order, restoring access to critical healthcare for all transgender Floridians,” plaintiff Jane Doe said. “No one should have to go through what my family has experienced.”

“As a transgender adult just trying to live my life and care for my family, it is so demeaning that the state of Florida thinks it’s their place to dictate my healthcare decisions,” said plaintiff Lucien Hamel.

“Members of the legislature have referred to the high quality healthcare I have received, which has allowed me to live authentically as myself, as ‘mutilation’ and ‘an abomination’ and have called the providers of this care ‘evil,’” Hamel added. “We hope the appellate court sees these rules and laws for what truly are: cruel.” 

“Transgender adults don’t need state officials looking over their shoulders, and families of transgender youth don’t need the government dictating how to raise their children,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of NCLR. “The district court heard the evidence and found that these restrictions are based on bias, not science. The court of appeals should affirm that judgment.” 

Noting Hinkle’s conclusion that the ban and restrictions were “motivated by animus, not science or evidence,” Simone Chris, who leads Southern Legal Counsel’s Transgender Rights Initiative, said, “The state has loudly and proudly enacted bans on transgender people accessing healthcare, using bathrooms, transgender teachers using their pronouns and titles, and a slough of other actions making it nearly impossible for transgender individuals to live in this state.”

Lowenstein Sandler Partner Thomas Redburn said, “The defendants have offered nothing on appeal that could serve as a valid basis for overturning that finding” by the district court.

“Not only does this dangerous law take away parents’ freedom to make responsible medical decisions for their child, it inserts the government into private health care matters that should be between adults and their providers,” said Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law.