On Monday, the Florida House Health and Human Services committee voted 13-6 to issue subpoenas to two medical organizations in an investigation on whether adopting and endorsing “gender-affirming care” as the standard of care for minors suffering from gender dysphoria is medically justified.
Florida House Speaker Paul Renner authorized the house committee to pursue this course of action in a letter he wrote on Sunday to Representative Randy Fine, the committee’s chairman.
The committee will issue the subpoenas to the state chapters of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association. The committee will be allowed to determine “whether the integrity of the medical profession has been compromised by a radical gender ideology that stands to cause permanent physical and mental harm to children and adolescents.”
The action follows a legal battle over a rule adopted by Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), which excludes from Medicaid coverage specific treatments for gender dysphoria. That rule is the subject of federal litigation, which led the AHCA to issue its own subpoenas probing the “gender-affirming care” standard. Organizations, including the two the Florida house committee is now investigating, fought those AHCA subpoenas, Renner’s letter explained.
The letter cited experts who have challenged what many professional medical organizations have called the consensus that “gender-affirming care” should be the standard.
Subpoenas from the house can go only to Florida organizations. Fine told the Miami Herald he would have liked to subpoena other groups, like the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. The representative said he hopes to get responses before the end of the legislative session in May.
“One would believe that if they have nothing to hide, they won’t hesitate to provide that information,” Fine said.
In addition to the Medicaid exclusion rule, the Florida Board of Medicine and the Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine have prohibited medical treatments, including puberty blockers and hormone therapies for children with gender dysphoria. The Florida house and senate have also passed bills codifying that rule.
Representative Fentrice Driskell, Democratic leader in the state house, said that since the house has already passed its bill dealing with medical care for transgender children, the subpoena doesn’t serve a purpose.
“We’re very concerned this could be a political witch hunt,” she told the Herald.