Florida lawmakers put forth a bill late last week that advocates say would essentially make it legal for a parent to kidnap their trans child, if the parent doesn’t want the child to transition.
Senate Bill 254 would let parents who disapprove of their children’s transition seize them and take them across state lines if they are receiving—or could soon receive—gender-affirming care, VICE reported. Introduced by State Sen. Clay Yarborough on March 3, the bill says that it would give parents “emergency custody” of their children if they are “at risk of or [are] being subjected to the provision of sex reassignment prescriptions or procedures.”
The bill would similarly grant courts “emergency jurisdiction” over children if they were found to be receiving—or, again, “at risk” of receiving—gender-affirming care. It would also bar public agencies from spending on gender-affirming care, leaving people who depend on public funding for care without government support.
The bill builds on existing law meant to protect children from abuse and domestic violence, and although Yarborough’s office told Insider that it wouldn’t affect the parental rights of a parent who is transitioning, Alejandra Caraballo, clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, told the outlet that the law is broad enough to apply to them.
“There’s a possibility this could even be read that even if it’s a parent who is transitioning, the law could apply,” Caraballo said. “Especially with the way that they view this as a ‘social contagion’ and they may try to say that the sibling transitioning would be a risk to the other child. I could easily see them making an argument there.”
Local LGBTQ2S+ advocacy group Equality Florida went further, telling Xtra that the bill represented “a gross, dangerous assault on parental rights.”
“Republican leadership has proposed voiding custody determinations from other states and upending families in service to [Gov. Ron] DeSantis’s right-wing agenda,” Brandon Wolf, press secretary with Equality Florida, wrote in an email. “Parents have the right to make healthcare decisions for their children. That includes healthcare supported by every major medical organization in the country.”
This bill is just one of many anti-trans actions that the Florida government has recently enacted. On the same day that this bill was proposed, state representatives Randy Fine and Ralph Massullo proposed a different bill that would bar doctors from providing children with gender-affirming care and severely curtail access to it for trans adults. Last month, Gov. DeSantis requested that state universities give his office the number of students who sought gender-affirming healthcare along with their ages, though the exact reason for his requesting the information wasn’t clear. Florida is also the site of the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law, which was enacted last year and severely limits LGBTQ2S+-inclusive education, and has inspired a host of copycat bills around the U.S.
The actions in Florida are just a few in a rash of recent anti-trans bills. Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Dakota and Utah have banned gender-affirming for minors care altogether; in 23 states, local governments have introduced or are considering bans on gender-affirming healthcare for minors. South Dakota last month enacted one such law that would force trans youth to detransition.
These anti-trans laws can be devastating for trans children and their parents. In Texas, where last year Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the state to investigate the parents of trans children for child abuse, families reported needing to leave the state to get proper healthcare for their children. And getting this healthcare is crucial to improving the mental health of trans children, who face high rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation—in some cases, due to the bills themselves.
“This bill is about extremist politics, not the well-being of young people,” Wolf said of the Florida bill. “A parent could lose custody of their child. Some may face felony prosecution for accessing life-saving care. Healthcare providers would be criminalized for providing best-practice medicine. Senator Yarborough should be ashamed, and everyone should be raising alarms about this outrageous, authoritarian precedent.”
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