Florida medical boards to revisit transgender care following passage of new law
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Carrying out a new law, a joint panel of the Florida Board of Medicine and the Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine is slated next week to discuss rules about treatments for transgender minors and adults.
The Joint Rules and Legislative Committee of the medical boards will meet Thursday in Tampa.
The Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis this month approved a law (SB 254) that bars doctors from providing treatments such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy to transgender minors. The law included an exception for children who had already started the treatments. Still, it required the Board of Medicine and the Board of Osteopathic Medicine to approve emergency rules that would spell out standards for care.
MORE HEADLINES:
- DeSantis rejects 'pronoun olympics' in signing bill that expands sexual orientation, gender identity law
- Gov. DeSantis to expand sexual orientation and gender law to all grades
- Parents of transgender kids seek to block DeSantis ban on gender-affirming care for minors
The law also requires doctors to get "informed consent" before providing treatments to transgender adults. An agenda for Thursday’s meeting indicates the joint committee will take up those issues.
At the urging of the DeSantis administration, the Board of Medicine and the Board of Osteopathic Medicine approved rules that took effect in March preventing doctors from providing puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and certain surgical procedures to transgender minors. The legislation that passed this month went further by putting the ban in law.
The new law and the medical board rules have been challenged in federal court.