Ron DeSantis Just Took Two Big Steps to Make Trans Lives Illegal
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed several bills into law that will criminalize multiple aspects of being transgender, part of a broader attack aimed at making it at best difficult — and at worst illegal — to be a trans person in Florida.
Although inaccurately framed as being bills whose purpose is to “let kids be kids,” we must closely examine these new laws to understand the full scope of DeSantis’s anti-LGBTQ efforts — and the fact that he has no clear end in sight.
More from Rolling Stone
DeSantis Makes 2024 Pitch: Trump Has No Chance of Beating Biden
DeSantis Officially Enters the 'Find Out' Phase of His War With Disney
In a year with more than 50 anti-LGBTQ bills already having been passed into law across the country, according to the ACLU’s legislative tracker, DeSantis and Florida’s Republican lawmakers are taking things much further.
This isn’t about disagreeing on issues. We aren’t all expected to think the same things or make the same decisions about how to live our lives or how to raise our children. This is about his using the law to take away fundamental choices that we all should be free to make for ourselves. And in the latest attacks, DeSantis and his ilk are staking out an even more extremist position — criminalizing certain choices, turning fundamental freedoms into potential prison sentences.
Two extreme anti-trans bills, both of which I covered at my Law Dork newsletter, were among the five bills signed into law by DeSantis on Wednesday — one addressing gender-affirming medical care and the other addressing bathroom use. Both have provisions that affect adults and have nothing to do with kids.
The first — S.B. 254 — takes several steps to prevent Florida’s minors from receiving any gender-affirming medical care anywhere. The law bans such care in the state, but it also gives emergency jurisdiction to courts to stop a child from leaving the state to receive gender-affirming medical care. Trying to get a child gender-affirming medical care is the only specific action, other than abandonment, that the law states prompts such emergency jurisdiction. It would be a third-degree felony to provide gender-affirming medical care within the state to a minor, which carries a potential five-year prison sentence.
Throughout the winter and spring this year, state after state under Republican control has taken steps to limit or ban gender-affirming medical care for minors — including a few others with felony criminal provisions. Other anti-trans bills have included laws banning trans girls’ and women’s participation in scholastic sports and school-related laws referred to as “forced outing” bills under the mantle of “parents’ rights.” In that vein, while the custody provisions are a step more extreme, the bill is similar to these other troubling bills premised on the claims that action needs to be taken to “protect” minors from receiving gender-affirming medical care — counter to the view of all major medical associations — and other aspects of transgender identities.
But, trans advocates warned, while those attacks are dangerous on their own, the attacks on trans people keep expanding — and haven’t been limited to kids. It was clear to them this wouldn’t end with laws targeted at children.
That’s now exactly what is happening in Florida. S.B. 254 also places limits on adults being able to receive gender-affirming medical care in three ways. First, it would bar state or local governments from funding gender-affirming medical care, though health plans or government-funded care, for people of all ages. It also would force all adults receiving such care to sign “informed consent” forms adopted by Florida’s Board of Medicine and Board of Osteopathic Medicine — boards whose appointees have implemented DeSantis’ anti-trans aims previously — that are almost certain to contain extreme anti-trans rhetoric. Finally, the bill bars anyone other than doctors from prescribing or performing gender-affirming medical care.
Hints of these moves have already been seen this year. In Missouri, for example, appointed Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, has tried to severely limit gender-affirming medical care for people of all ages. An Oklahoma bill that passed the House there would have added restrictions for adult care.
But, in Florida, it is now law. What’s more, the new law also makes it a first-degree misdemeanor to violate the new restrictions on care for adults. That comes with a potential prison sentence of up to a year. For someone other than a doctor prescribing hormones to a trans adult, for example, as is commonplace.
Florida isn’t only criminalizing medical professionals for providing gender-affirming medical care. The second new law effectively criminalizes trans people themselves.
H.B. 1521 bans trans people from using the restroom that fits with their gender identity in most government buildings. Defining sex based on a biological, birth-based definition, the law then limits restroom use in government-owned buildings based on that definition of sex. It applies in prisons and detention facilities, schools, and any public building — which appears to include any government-owned airport, convention center, or stadium.
The law forces schools and prisons to create new disciplinary procedures for employees, students, and/or inmates who violate the law — again, for trans people, this means using the restroom that fits their gender identity.
For others, and for non-employees in any of those public buildings, the law creates a new criminal violation. The law generally makes it a first-degree misdemeanor whenever a trans person doesn’t leave a restroom when asked to leave by any employee of the government agency that occupies that building. A first-degree misdemeanor can mean up to a year in prison in Florida. For not leaving a bathroom.
These new laws will be challenged in court, and all or most of the provisions might even end up being struck down. But that isn’t enough.
Their passage alone will lead to people facing serious physical and mental health difficulties. Erin Reed covered at her newsletter this past week challenges that the restrictions on adult care are already causing for trans people in Florida.
DeSantis shouldn’t be comfortable signing such bills into law, and lawmakers shouldn’t feel comfortable passing them in the first place.
News coverage of DeSantis fails us when it fails to highlight his efforts to advance these anti-trans measures — criminalizing trans people for being trans in government (and other) buildings and criminalizing medical professionals for trying to help trans people live their lives.
This is particularly so here, because this is not new. Under DeSantis’ governorship, Florida had already taken the extreme step of barring discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation up to grade three in schools with its “Don’t Say Gay” law — passed as the Parental Rights in Education Act in early 2022. By earlier this year, even The Associated Press felt comfortable referencing DeSantis’ acts as “his agenda targeting the LGBTQ+ community.”
The media fails us when it doesn’t cover these new criminal measures, his established history, and the many other anti-LGBTQ measures he is backing this year — including restricting proper pronoun use in schools, expanding the “Don’t Say Gay” law, creating medical “conscience” exemptions that could restrict LGBTQ care even further, and barring diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at the state’s colleges and universities.
DeSantis is making it very clear that he does not want LGBTQ people or their families in his state — as has his spokesperson, somehow even more directly. As DeSantis still apparently plans to launch a campaign for president, these acts of hate — and their real-world effects on people — must not get lost in the coverage or in our minds.
Best of Rolling Stone
