LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Officials at the Florida Department of Health said the state boards of medicine and osteopathic medicine voted Friday to prohibit sex reassignment surgeries and any surgical procedures that alter primary or secondary sexual characteristics, as well as puberty blocking, hormone, and hormone antagonist therapies for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors.


What You Need To Know

  • The Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine voted to prohibit certain treatments for gender dysphoria in minors

  • Florida's surgeon general says the ruling will protect the state's children

  • Equality Florida says the rule places transgender young people at a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and suicide

"Today's vote from the Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine will protect our children from irreversible surgeries and highly experimental treatments," Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo said in a statement. "I appreciate the integrity of the Boards for ruling in the best interest of children in Florida despite facing tremendous pressure to permit these unproven and risky treatments. Children deserve to learn how to navigate this world without harmful pressure, and Florida will continue to fight for kids to be kids."

Not everyone was happy with Friday's decision, though.

"With young lives on the line, another state agency has placed the political ambitions of Ron DeSantis over its duty to protect Floridians," Equality Florida Director of Transgender Equality Nikole Parker said in a statement. "This rule, as written, puts transgender youth at higher risk of depression, anxiety, and suicidality. Those are the facts purposely ignored by a Board of Medicine stacked with DeSantis' political appointees who have put their toxic politics over people's health and wellbeing.

"Transgender Floridians exist. We are part of this community. Gender-affirming care is lifesaving care — and it is care that is supported by every major medical organization, an overwhelming majority of medical providers, and should be left to young people, their families, and their doctors. Not politicians. Shame on the Florida Board of Medicine for trading the suffering of transgender youth and their parents for cheap political points."

Officials with the Health Department said the Board of Osteopathic Medicine also voted to include an exception for non-surgical research that requires extensive protocols and assessments.

"It's still really hard to tell exactly what the impacts are going to be for folks who are in the middle of some of these treatments," said Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization. "Certainly, what it means is that for young folks who have not yet started receiving any kind of care for their gender dysphoria, that it is going to be extremely difficult for them, if not impossible for them, to get that care going forward."

Oakley said that before puberty, transition is a social process and surgery isn't an option young people typically turn to. Instead, they use puberty blockers or undergoing hormone therapy.

"It puts a pause button on so that a young person has the opportunity to become of an age where they can give truly meaningfully informed consent to some of the more permanent kinds of treatment," she said.

Oakley said she expects to see legal challenges to the rule.

Health Department officials said the next step will be for the proposed rules to be entered into the Florida Administrative Register.