Coalition of U.S. Attorneys General accuse Florida Governor Ron DeSantis of violating students’ rights
On March 3, the Attorneys General from fifteen states and the District of Columbia signed and delivered a letter written to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis accusing the Republican Governor and his administration of violating the privacy and rights of university age transgender students. The letter was written on stationary from the office of Letitia James, the Attorney General from the State of New York, and signed by the Attorneys General from Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, New Mexico, and Washington State.
They said reports have suggested that DeSantis might use the information to eliminate funding for gender-affirming care for students, which they said would follow on previous actions DeSantis has taken targeting the LGBTQ community. ~ The Hill
In January 2023, DeSantis released a survey asking the State Universities in Florida to provide his administration with the number and ages of students seeking gender-affirming care or treatment for gender dysphoria – the clinically significant distress caused when a person’s assigned birth gender is not the same as the one with which they identify. DeSantis had recently taken similar actions limiting health care access for transgender youth, like cutting Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care and calling on the Florida Board of Medicine to prohibit the use of puberty blockers for people under 18.
In the letter to DeSantis, the 16-member coalition of Attorneys General joined with the letter’s primary author, Letitia James, to tell the Florida Governor that:
“The undersigned Attorneys General write with grave concern over your request for information regarding the provision of gender-affirming care to Florida university students experiencing gender dysphoria. This information request may be intended to intimidate, and will actually intimidate, university administrators and health care providers and chill vulnerable students, including the students or staff in Florida’s state university system who are citizens of our States, from accessing necessary medical care.”
“The information request you have issued threatens to undermine the private medical decisions made by transgender individuals together with their families and health care providers and risks the lives and welfare of some of the most vulnerable people in our communities,” the letter says. ~ CNN
One of the letter’s signatories, Maryland’s Attorney General Anthony G. Brown, citing federal protections against discrimination in accessing health care and proven links between the denial of gender-affirming care and negative health outcomes such as substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and suicidality, urged DeSantis – along with his other 15 coalition members – to immediately rescind his request for private health information.
“Governor DeSantis’ request for students’ private gender- affirming care information is discriminatory,” Brown said. “Collecting this information appears to be paving the way for the Governor to unconstitutionally target and limit the programs that these individuals rely on for healthcare and well-being.”
The coalition feels that DeSantis’ actions not only jeopardize the health and safety of the students and their families and ignore widely accepted medical standards, but also unjustly insert the State into the private relationship between care provider and patient. Brown wrote in his own letter, generated out of his Attorney General’s office, that in the past year, nearly one in five transgender and non-binary youth attempted suicide, compared with one in 10 cisgender youth – those youth whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex.
“Targeting the healthcare that transgender students rely on violates students’ rights to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, as well as their right to freedom from discrimination in federally funded education institutions under Title IX.”
In the letter, the Attorneys General pledge their commitment to guaranteeing full equality and dignity for transgender individuals and assert that DeSantis is not justified in his request for information – and that his request risks the lives and welfare of students and staff in the Florida state university system.
Transgender young people are among the most vulnerable populations in the country, and transgender individuals of all ages already face steep barriers to obtaining basic health care, wrote Brown. The Attorneys General also note there is strong medical consensus that improving access to gender-affirming care saves lives and urge Governor DeSantis to rescind his information request without delay.
Reaffirming their stance and objection to DeSantis’ request for information that would be “in keeping with your prior actions targeting the LGBTQIA community, and particularly transgender youth,” adding that his request violates students’ rights under federal law—including privacy—and offends basic human rights,” the letter closes with, “We strongly urge you to rescind your information request without delay.”
For more on DeSantis’s request for information seeking details on transgender university students, see the video accompanying this article.
Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today / Follow Richard on Facebook. Twitter & Instagram
