“Ignoring thousands of public comments and expert testimony, Florida’s AHCA has finalized a rule that will deny Medicaid coverage for all medically necessary gender-affirming care for both youth and adults. This discriminatory and medically unsound rule will take effect on August 21, 2022, putting transgender people in jeopardy of losing access to critical gender-affirming health care services.

“Southern Legal Counsel, Florida Health Justice Project, Lambda Legal, and National Health Law Program urge the Florida Board of Medicine to stop playing politics with people’s health care and not to adopt guidelines for a standard of care to treat gender dysphoria that are contrary to the evidence-based and overwhelming consensus that gender-affirming medical care for the treatment of gender dysphoria is safe, effective, and medically necessary.”

On June 17, 2022, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) issued a Notice of Proposed Rule for a new rule that would deny Medicaid coverage for all medically necessary gender-affirming care for both youth and adults. Southern Legal Counsel, Florida Health Justice Project, Lambda Legal, and National Health Law Program are engaging in and carefully monitoring the rule-making process, and you can read their statements and obtain more information at ProtectFLtranshealth.org.

Southern Legal Counsel (SLC) works to protect the rights of transgender individuals throughout Florida, including the rights of transgender youth to access medically necessary, gender-affirming care. SLC stands with transgender youth and families throughout Florida and seeks to provide clarity for those who are concerned about the impact of the guidance released yesterday.

Southern Legal Counsel expanded its UF Healthy Kids Medical Legal Partnership (MLP) in 2020 to UF Health’s Pediatric Endocrinology and Pediatric Hematology/Oncology divisions.

Since launching the MLP in 2018 as a pilot in the UF Severe Asthma Clinic, SLC staff attorneys have met with 47 patients and their families and have identified 114 health-harming legal needs. Its early success was chronicled in UF Health’s The Post in 2019.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Southern Legal Counsel, the ACLU of Florida, and pro bono attorney Eric Lindstrom today filed a federal lawsuit against the Florida Department of Management Services, the University of Florida, and the Public Defender of the Second Judicial Circuit of Florida on behalf of named plaintiffs Jami Claire and Kathryn Lane, who as state employees were denied medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria because of the state’s categorical exclusion of coverage for “gender reassignment or modification services or supplies.”

The Department of Housing and Urban Development May 22 proposed new rules that would weaken protections for transgender people who are experiencing homelessness by allowing federally funded shelters to deny them admission or require them to share bathrooms and sleeping areas with people of a different gender identity.

Under current federal regulations adopted by HUD, sex-segregated homeless shelters must admit all transgender and gender non-conforming individuals and house those individuals according to their gender identity.