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Judge Allen Winsor, a Trump appointee, said the inmate who filed the suit hasn't shown she's been harmed.
A federal judge in Florida has declined to issue a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of a state policy aimed at withholding gender-affirming care from incarcerated transgender people.
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U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor, an appointee of Donald Trump, with a history of anti-LGBTQ+ decisions, ruled Friday that the policy limiting hormone treatment does not amount to a “blanket ban” and that rules against social transition do not constitute a denial of medically necessary care.
The Florida Department of Corrections issued a bulletin September 30 setting new rules for the medical care that the department would provide to inmates who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Florida law bans the use of state funds for treatment of gender dysphoria unless necessary to comply with the U.S. Constitution or a court decision.
“Contrary to the medical mainstream, the bulletin suggests those seeking hormone therapy may have endured ‘short-termed delusions or beliefs which may later be changed and reversed’ and recommended against providing any gender-affirming medical care unless extensive barriers are overcome,” says a press release from the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing trans inmate Reiyn Keohane in her lawsuit against the policy. The suit alleges the policy violates the Constitution's Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
Keohane and other trans inmates have testified that they were subjected to degrading treatment under the policy, which also bars incarcerated trans women from wearing women’s undergarments or growing their hair long.
“Transgender women were told that those who did not cut their hair in compliance with male grooming standards would be forcibly shorn, and those who did not turn in their female undergarments and feminine canteen items would be disciplined,” the ACLU release states. “Transgender women were forced to have their breasts examined to determine if their breasts were large enough, in the eyes of the department, to require a bra.”
Winsor, referring to the wearing of women’s undergarments and hairstyles as “social accommodations, wrote that “Keohane presented no evidence showing that denying requested social accommodations is tantamount to providing care so deficient that it constitutes an Eighth Amendment violation.” He also said no inmate has been denied hormone treatment under the policy, but Keohane and others fear they will lose their treatment.
However, the judge said Keohane “has not shown an imminent injury relating to hormone treatment” and that when the case goes to trial, she is not likely prove she has been harmed either by those restrictions or or the ban on social accommodations.
“Florida officials are waging a baseless campaign to dehumanize and degrade incarcerated people like our client,” Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s LGBTQ + HIV Project, said in the release. “Allowing this policy to move forward threatens the basic human rights of transgender people in the state’s custody and the court’s order … affords the state’s policy more credulity than it deserves when the clear intent of the state is to ban this health care outright.”
The Advocate has sought comment from the ACLU about its next course of action but has not received a response.
