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A Rash of Proposed Florida Laws Use ‘Genocidal Rhetoric’ to Attack Trans People, Legal Experts Say

Business Insider

A series of new bills in Florida taking aim at health care providers offering gender-affirming care and parents who support their trans kids are part of a targeted attack against gender nonconforming people in the state, legal and mental health experts told Insider, with the aim to "erase them from public life entirely."

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The proposed new bills go further to expand anti-trans legislation than others across the nation, disrupting established custody and health care precedent, legal experts told Insider.

Brett Ward, co-chair of the top 100 law firm Blank Rome's Matrimonial and Family Law Practice Group, told Insider that Florida state Senator Clay Yarborough's proposed bill, SB 254, which would allow disapproving parents to take "emergency jurisdiction" over their children if the minor receives or is "at risk of" receiving gender-affirming care, is unprecedented in how it interferes with parental rights.

"It's really concerning not just from a moral perspective, which is not my area of expertise, but from a family law perspective," Ward said. "Other than the anti-trans messaging that goes along with this bill, you have the state interfering with the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care of their children, which is a Supreme Court-recognized due process right. This is an absolute trampling on that right and also, in my opinion, a trampling on the sovereignty of other states."

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"A Rash of Proposed Florida Laws Use ‘Genocidal Rhetoric’ to Attack Trans People, Legal Experts Say," by Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert and Katie Balevic was published in Business Insider on March 13, 2023.