Florida's medical boards approved a rule on Friday banning gender-affirming medications and surgery for youth with gender dysphoria who aren't already being treated.
The Florida Board of Medicine voted to adopt a for new patients under age 18 with gender dysphoria, which will prohibit both gender-affirming surgeries and medications including puberty blockers and hormone therapies. The rule will not apply to transgender and gender-diverse youth who are already receiving treatment.
The state's Board of Osteopathic Medicine also voted to restrict use of gender-affirming care for minors on Friday, but it included an exception for kids enrolled in clinical trials, according to .
The rule will now go through a weeks-long approval process that will include further public comment. Once the rules are adopted, physicians who don't adhere to them will risk losing their medical licenses.
The move to ban a procedure through a state's medical board is an unprecedented one, . The strategy got around the Republican-controlled State Legislature, which had twice declined taking up a bill to restrict gender-affirming care.
The medical board voted 6-3, with five members not present, to adopt the new rule, according to the Times. All 14 members of the board were appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
David Diamond, MD, a radiation oncologist who is the chair of the board, said there's a "pressing need for additional, high-quality research" on gender-affirming care in kids, the Times reported.
The Endocrine Society called the new standard of care "anti-science" and "blatantly discriminatory," adding that it "contradicts medical evidence followed by the Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the Pediatric Endocrine Society and other mainstream medical organizations."
"Medical evidence, not politics, should inform treatment decisions," the society said in a statement. "The move by the Florida Board of Health to ban gender-affirming care based on a political agenda rather than on science sets a dangerous precedent for all health care decisions."
During the 2022 legislative session, have proposed bills that restrict healthcare for transgender youth, according to non-profit organization Freedom for All Americans. Florida is one of several states that have restricted gender-affirming care for minors. Arkansas and Alabama passed laws banning such care for minors, and Texas said it would investigate parents of transgender children seeking such care. However, Florida is the first to do so via medical board action.
The rule banning gender-affirming care was initially drafted on Oct. 28 by members of the Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine Joint Rules/Legislative Committee. The boards first agreed to begin drafting rules on treatment for transgender youth in August, following new from the Department of Health earlier this year recommending against the provision of gender-affirming care, citing a "lack of conclusive evidence, and the potential for long-term, irreversible effects."
In their guidance, the boards stated that they did not recommend social transition, puberty blockers, hormones, or surgery for children, and recommended support from family and peers, as well as counseling from a licensed mental health professional.
In June, Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration that supported the guidelines, stating that treatment for gender dysphoria, such as hormones, puberty blockers, and surgery, is "not consistent with widely accepted professional medical standards and are experimental and investigational with the potential for harmful long term affects [sic]."
Soon after the release of this report, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD, asked the Board of Medicine to establish a standard of care for these "complex and irreversible procedures," according to a obtained by NBC News.
In addition to the board of medicine decisions around healthcare for transgender youth, Florida's Medicaid regulator approved rules in August that blocked state-subsidized healthcare from covering gender-affirming care.