U.S. Federal Courts
Families with trans kids sue Fla. over trans youth healthcare ban
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed bill on March 16
A lawsuit on behalf of four families with transgender children was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, challenging the state’s Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine’s ban on gender affirming healthcare for minors.
The legal groups representing the four families, GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Human Rights Campaign and the Southern Legal Counsel, Inc., noted in the suit that the bans contradict guidelines established through years of clinical research and recommended by every major medical association including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
The lawsuit also spells out that the policies unlawfully strips parents of the right to make informed decisions about their children’s medical treatment and violates the equal protection rights of transgender youth by denying them medically necessary, doctor-recommended healthcare to treat their gender dysphoria.
The enactment of Florida’s transgender healthcare ban, which went into effect on March 16 has faced considerable scrutiny as a politically-motivated process instigated at the urging of the governor and ignoring established medical and scientific consensus on medical care for transgender youth.
Statewide LGBTQ Equality rights advocacy group Equality Florida has decried the ban saying it was little more than a cultural war maneuver by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis who is widely expected to announce a run for the presidency in 2024.
In the summer of 2022, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and the Department of Health asked the state Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine to adopt a categorical ban on all treatment of gender dysphoria for people under 18.
In February and March 2023, respectively, the boards adopted formal rules prohibiting all access to safe, effective medical treatments for trans youth who have received a gender dysphoria diagnosis but who have not yet begun puberty delaying medication or hormone treatments. Surgeon General Ladapo and all members of the Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine are defendants in the families’ suit challenging the ban.
“This policy came about through a political process with a predetermined conclusion, and it stands in direct contrast to the overwhelming weight of the evidence and science,” said Simone Chriss, director of the Southern Legal Counsel’s Transgender Rights Initiative. “There is an unbelievable degree of hypocrisy when a state that holds itself out as being deeply concerned with protecting ‘parents’ rights’ strips parents of their right to ensure their children receive appropriate medical care. I have worked with families and their healthcare providers in Florida for many years. They work tirelessly every day to ensure the best health outcomes for their kids and patients, and they are worried sick about the devastating impacts that this ban will have.”
“The Florida Boards of Medicine chose to ignore the evidence and science in front of them and instead put families in the unthinkable position of not being able to provide essential healthcare for their kids,” said Jennifer Levi, GLAD’s Senior Director of Transgender and Queer Rights.
“Parents, not the government, should make healthcare decisions for their children,” said Shannon Minter, Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “This policy crosses a dangerous line and should concern anyone who cares about family privacy or the ability of doctors to do their jobs without undue government interference.”
“It’s alarming to see such a concerted, top-down effort to target a small and vulnerable population,” said Human Rights Campaign Legal Director Sarah Warbelow. “The Florida Surgeon General, Department of Health and Boards of Medicine should be focused on the real and serious public health issues Florida faces, not on putting transgender kids and their families in harm’s way.”
In a press statement by the legal teams representing them, the four families also weighed in:
“Like most parents, my husband and I want nothing more than for our daughter to be healthy, happy, and safe,” said Jane Doe speaking about her 11-year-old daughter, Susan. “Being able to consult with our team of doctors to understand what our daughter is experiencing and make the best, most informed decisions about her care has been critically important for our family. She is a happy, confident child, but this ban takes away our right to provide her with the next step in her recommended treatment when she reaches puberty. The military doctors we work with understand the importance of providing that evidence-based, individualized care. We’re proud to serve our country, but we are being treated differently than other military families because of a decision by politicians in the state where we are stationed. We have no choice but to fight this ban to protect our daughter’s physical and mental health.”
“This ban puts me and other Florida parents in the nightmare position of not being able to help our child when they need us most,” said Brenda Boe, who is challenging the ban on behalf of herself and her 14-year-old son, Bennett Boe. “My son has a right to receive appropriate, evidence-based medical care. He was finally getting to a place where he felt hopeful, where being prescribed testosterone was on the horizon and he could see a future for himself in his own body. That has been ripped away by this cruel and discriminatory rule.”
“Working with our healthcare team to understand what my daughter is experiencing and learning there are established, effective treatments that are already helping her to thrive has been an incredible relief,” said Fiona Foe, who is challenging the ban on behalf of herself and her 10-year-old daughter, Freya Foe. “I know everyone may not understand what it means to have a transgender child, but taking away our opportunity to help our daughter live a healthy and happy life is cruel and unfair.”
“Our daughter has been saying she is a girl since she was three — it hasn’t gone away,” said Carla Coe, a plaintiff in the lawsuit along with her 9-year-old daughter, Christina Coe. “Since she started being able to live as a girl she has been so much happier and better adjusted. Having the resources and support to make the best decisions for her wellbeing has been so important for our family. I’m scared this ban will take away the essential medical care she may need when she gets older. We just want to do what’s right for our kid.”
Maryland
4th Circuit dismisses lawsuit against Montgomery County schools’ pronoun policy
Substitute teacher Kimberly Polk challenged regulation in 2024
A federal appeals court has ruled Montgomery County Public Schools did not violate a substitute teacher’s constitutional rights when it required her to use students’ preferred pronouns in the classroom.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision it released on Jan. 28 ruled against Kimberly Polk.
The policy states that “all students have the right to be referred to by their identified name and/or pronoun.”
“School staff members should address students by the name and pronoun corresponding to the gender identity that is consistently asserted at school,” it reads. “Students are not required to change their permanent student records as described in the next section (e.g., obtain a court-ordered name and/or new birth certificate) as a prerequisite to being addressed by the name and pronoun that corresponds to their identified name. To the extent possible, and consistent with these guidelines, school personnel will make efforts to maintain the confidentiality of the student’s transgender status.”
The Washington Post reported Polk, who became a substitute teacher in Montgomery County in 2021, in November 2022 requested a “religious accommodation, claiming that the policy went against her ‘sincerely held religious beliefs,’ which are ‘based on her understanding of her Christian religion and the Holy Bible.’”
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman in January 2025 dismissed Polk’s lawsuit that she filed in federal court in Beltsville. Polk appealed the decision to the 4th Circuit.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge in Md. rules against White House passport policy
Lambda Legal represents transgender, nonbinary people in lawsuit
A federal judge in Maryland on Tuesday ruled in favor of six transgender people who are challenging the Trump-Vance administration’s passport policy.
President Donald Trump once he took office signed an executive order that banned the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers. A memo the Washington Blade obtained directed State Department personnel to “suspend any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker from that defined in the executive order
pending further guidance.”
The Trump-Vance administration only recognizes two genders: male and female.
The lawsuit that Lambda Legal filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Baltimore in April alleges the policy “has caused and is causing grave and immediate harm to transgender people like plaintiffs, in violation of their constitutional rights to equal protection.”
Seven trans people — Zander Schlacter, Jill Tran, Lia Hepler-Mackey, David Doe, Robert Roe, Peter Poe, and Kris Koe — filed the lawsuit.
Roe is a U.S. Foreign Service Officer who currently lives in Europe. Lambda Legal, who represents him and the six other plaintiffs, notes Chief Judge George L. Russell III dismissed Roe’s case because the State Department has yet to deny him “an accurate passport.”
“Like every other court that has considered this executive order, the court finds its stated purpose does not serve an important governmental interest that is exceedingly persuasive; further, the discriminatory means employed are not substantially related to the achievement of those objectives,” said Russell in his ruling.
Lambda Legal Counsel Carl Charles described Russell’s decision as “a crucial victory for our clients and transgender people nationwide who have been trapped by this administration’s cruel and discriminatory policy.”
“The court recognized that forcing inaccurate identity documents on transgender Americans causes immediate and irreparable harm,” said Charles in a press release. “Our clients can now travel with dignity and safety while we continue fighting to overturn this discriminatory policy entirely.”
The American Civil Liberties Union earlier this year filed a separate lawsuit against the passport directive on behalf of seven trans and nonbinary people.
A federal judge in Boston in April issued a preliminary junction against it. A three-judge panel on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week ruled against the Trump-Vance administration’s motion to delay the move.
U.S. Federal Courts
AGs sue White House over push to restrict gender-affirming care in blue states
14 states, DC joined the lawsuit filed Friday
A group of 15 Democratic attorneys general and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) have accused the Trump-Vance administration of unlawfully pressuring health providers to withhold access to gender-affirming medicine for minors in places where these treatments remain legal.
In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts on Friday, the attorneys general outlined multiple ways in which, they claim, the administration has overstepped its authority to restrict care that is protected under state law, such as by threatening providers with meritless lawsuits and federal investigations.
On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department to pursue enforcement actions to proscribe medically necessary gender related interventions, which were characterized in his executive order as “chemical and surgical mutilation.”
Thereafter, the DOJ has issued subpoenas, demanded private patient data, and suggested that criminal charges might be coming — actions that have no legal basis, and instead constitute efforts to strong-arm Democratic states into alignment with the administration’s position on gender-affirming care for minors, according to the complaint.
As a result of these pressures, the attorneys general argue, providers have reduced or eliminated services while patients have reported cancelled appointments and uncertainty over whether they can continue receiving treatment.
Their lawsuit asks the court to block the administration’s actions and halt the enforcement of the executive order along with another that prohibits the federal government from recognizing transgender people or acknowledging that gender identity does not always correspond with one’s sex at birth.
The 15 attorneys general are from Massachusetts, California, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Delaware, D.C., Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.
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