WEEKLY ROUNDUP
Fighting for care
TALLAHASSEE — Legal wrangling over a new state law making it more difficult for trans adults to access hormone-replacement therapy and surgery continued this week, as transgender people asked a federal judge to block the measure.
The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law, championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, this spring. The new law, in part, requires people diagnosed with gender dysphoria to sign informed-consent forms crafted by state medical boards.
Under other restrictions in the law, only medical doctors and osteopathic physicians — not nurse practitioners — are allowed to order hormone therapy. Also, the law requires people seeking gender-affirming care to undergo lifelong mental-health exams by state board-licensed psychiatrists or psychologists.
The law also banned doctors from ordering gender-affirming care for children but allowed minors already receiving such treatment to continue, under certain conditions.
Parents of transgender children filed a lawsuit challenging the restrictions, and U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle last month blocked a ban on the use of puberty blockers and hormones to treat children diagnosed with gender dysphoria, calling the prohibition “an exercise in politics, not good medicine.” The state is appealing Hinkle’s ruling.
The lawsuit was revised Friday to add several adults as plaintiffs, and on Monday, the plaintiffs’ lawyers asked Hinkle to block parts of the law dealing with adults.
The law “singles out transgender individuals and creates arbitrary, harmful and medically unjustified restrictions that deter them from obtaining needed medical care,” the motion said.
Adult plaintiffs who joined the lawsuit alleged they have been unable to find treatment or have had long-scheduled surgeries canceled since DeSantis signed the law in May.
“One overall effect of the transgender medical restrictions has been to create a crisis of availability for transition-related care in Florida, with demand for that care vastly outstripping the supply of physicians authorized and willing to supply it,” the revised lawsuit said.
The motion filed Monday also argued that the “restrictions on transgender adults’ ability to obtain care, and those in the informed consent forms, are not even rational. Rather than fostering any interests in health or safety, they undermine them.”
Florida is among a number of Republican-led states that have approved measures to curb or prohibit gender-affirming care for transgender children and adults. DeSantis, who is running for president, has made the issue one of his priorities.
SEEKING A REFUND
A dispute about whether the University of Florida should have to return fees to students because of a campus shutdown early in the Covid-19 pandemic is headed to the state Supreme Court, as justices said Thursday that they will take up the case.
Justices issued an order saying they will consider what is known as a “certified question of great public importance” in the potential class-action lawsuit filed by UF graduate student Anthony Rojas.
At issue in the case is whether the university breached a contract with Rojas when it did not provide services linked to fees for things such as transportation, health-care and athletics services that were not provided because of the shutdown.
Attorneys for Rojas went to the Supreme Court in January after a divided panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal said an Alachua County circuit judge should have dismissed the lawsuit.
In the appellate court’s Nov. 22 majority opinion, Judge Rachel Nordby wrote that “assorted documents attached to the complaint do not constitute an express written contract.”
As a result, Nordby wrote, UF is shielded by sovereign immunity, a legal concept that generally protects government agencies from liability. Under sovereign immunity, agencies can face breach-of-contract lawsuits if it is shown that contracts have been violated.
“We are sympathetic to Rojas and all other students whose on-campus experiences were clipped short and rendered non-existent by the university’s response to Covid-19,” Nordby wrote in a seven-page opinion joined by Judge Lori Rowe. “And if there were a sufficient contract attached to his complaint, we would affirm the trial court (decision not to dismiss the case) without hesitation. But without such an express, written agreement … sovereign immunity bars the action.”
The lawsuit is one of numerous similar cases filed in Florida and across the country.
Campuses throughout Florida and the nation were temporarily shut down in 2020 after the Covid-19 pandemic hit, with students forced to learn remotely. The UF case deals only with fees and not tuition.
State appeals courts have rejected similar lawsuits filed against Florida International University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida A&M University and Miami Dade College.
The Supreme Court’s order did not set a date for arguments.
ANOTHER DEPARTURE
The longest-serving current president in the state university system is planning to leave the job.
Florida Polytechnic University President Randy Avent will step down next year, continuing a wave of leadership changes at state universities.
Avent, who has been the Lakeland school’s only president since it opened in 2014, announced Monday that he will leave the job in July 2024 and, after a sabbatical, return as a faculty member.
“Leading the university from its infancy to the strong campus we have today has been the privilege of my lifetime,” Avent said in the announcement. “I never imagined that I would be part of establishing a brand-new STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) university and molding the way it would serve students, industry and the entire state.”
Avent’s announcement came as Florida Atlantic University and New College of Florida, which is part of the university system, operate under interim presidents. Also, Florida Gulf Coast University President Aysegul Timur took her position on July 1.
Meanwhile, University of Florida President Ben Sasse, Florida State University President Richard McCullough, University of North Florida President Moez Limayem, University of South Florida President Rhea Law and Florida International University President Kenneth Jessell have taken the helms of their schools during the past two years.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Citing a “crisis of availability” of care, transgender people are asking a federal judge to block a new state law making it more difficult for trans adults to access hormone-replacement therapy and surgery.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Being forced to go without testosterone has had, and will continue to have, devastating consequences for me physically, emotionally and psychologically. Because of being unable to obtain care, I experience debilitating fear, anxiety, self-loathing and despair.” — Lucien Hamel, a 27-year-old transgender man who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.