Following the passage of a bill last year that was supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis, transgender girls incarcerated in Florida claim that the jail system’s now complicated procedure for providing gender-affirming care has become disorganized. Most young people are not eligible for gender-affirming care under SB 254, but transgender people in state prison claim that this law, which forbids using state resources for “sex-reassignment prescriptions or procedures,” is also having an impact on them.
They claim that there has been little to no explanation for the sudden changes or delays in medications and other accommodations. Before inmates may start receiving treatment, a five-person panel known as the Gender Dysphoria Review Team was established in 2017. Those whose care depends on the staff claim to have waited months since the law was passed in May. Some claim that because the team isn’t meeting at all right now, they are in a “twilight zone.”
Over the course of several weeks, the Florida Department of Corrections’ director of contacts ignored more than a few texts, phone calls, and letters. She also didn’t respond when a reporter stopped by the agency’s offices to inquire about the Gender Dysphoria Review Team and the prison agency. The reporter also inquired about its policies on providing care for transgender people. Another director who was approached at the state Capitol building promised to pass along questions to the division but received no responses.
Communications Director Kayla McLaughlin only responded in an email in June, stating that the organization “provides health solutions in accordance with state law.” As a result, no state cash will be used to carry out the providers specified in SB 254.
In Florida prison, more than 20 trans women reported that abrupt changes to their treatment started over the summer, not long after the law went into effect.
“When we bring up a health issue, we are frequently told that there is nothing we can do because of the law,” according to transgender girl Betty Bartee, who is being held at the Avon Park Correctional Institution in the heart of Florida after being found guilty of murder in 1997. According to Bartee and others, hormone treatments that were once routinely refilled are then postponed, sometimes for months, forcing the women to cycle on and off of their medications.
Nearly half of the nation’s states have passed legislation since 2021 to forbid trans youth from receiving medical care to support their moves. DeSantis positioned Florida as a testing ground for authoritarian “anti-woke” legislation, including some that restricted the privileges of transgender people, before withdrawing from the competition for the Republican nomination for president this year. DeSantis signed four bills into law, including SB 254, which states that any “governmental object” in Florida “may not waste state money… for sex-reassignment prescriptions and procedures,” in addition to outlawing gender-affirming care for the majority of people under 18 on one morning in May.
Prisons are not specifically mentioned in the rules. Prison would naturally be covered by the law, according to Simone Chriss, a counsel with Southern Legal Counsel, a Gainesville, Florida-based philanthropic civil rights law firm that has been battling the legal system in court. However, it also makes no clear what it means when it refers to spending position resources. The objective, in my opinion, is to persuade [state agencies] to…err on the side of caution in order to absolve themselves of responsibility for breaking these complex laws and rules,” Chriss said.
In the first state House and Senate versions of the expenses, which DeSantis signed that morning, the legislation sought to ensure that prisons home “females and males in its prison differently, based on their sex.” Although that language was eventually removed, lawyers and transgender prisoners in Florida claim that this is already the corrections agency’s practice: transgendered women are housed in male facilities and men in female facilities.
Requests for information on the transgender community in the state’s prisons went unanswered by the corrections division. However, 235 trans people were being held in Florida prisons at the time, according to state officials who spoke with NBC News in 2020.
Prison career can be dangerous and challenging for trans people. Only after years of protracted legal battles are standard medical and social supports like gender-appropriate garments or hormones accessible. In those situations, federal court decisions have consistently ruled that it is cruel and unusual punishment for prisons to deny hormones and other transition-related attention.
According to Jen Orthwein, a California civil rights lawyer who has represented transgender prisoners in some historic cases, Florida’s new rules “would completely issue” with those decisions. According to Orthwein, “any general prohibition on medically necessary treatment is a violation of the Constitution.”
A diagnosis of gender dysphoria in Florida’s prisons you open up a variety of fundamental amenities and health care, such as hormone therapy, state-issued bras, and authorization to wear long hair in male facilities. The Gender Dysphoria Review Team, which is made up of three medical and mental health supervisors, two correction
al administrators, and the jail system’s chief of security, must, nevertheless, give more approval to a diagnosis made by an expert in mental healthcare. The assessment staff is required to meet at least once every three weeks in accordance with department policy. According to transgender women in the state’s prison system, the team hasn’t spoken since May. The five members of the team didn’t answer any phone calls or emails asking if the meetings had been suspended and when they planned to reconvene.
Many trans women claim that they have been waiting for the team’s final acceptance in limbo for months. Without it, they run the risk of having their heads shaved or being imprisoned alone for donning beauty or children’s underwear. Jada Edwards claimed that when she entered prison in 2022, officers handcuffed her and violently shaved her tresses. “I was crying for over a week,” she said. Edwards fears that officials will commit the same crime suddenly while she is serving time in a men’s jail outside of Tallahassee on robbery, burglary and related expenses without their permission.
Other women claim that after taking estrogen prescribed by inside doctors, they developed breasts when they first entered prison, but they were unable to wear bras because the team had not yet approved their diagnosis.
All of the women we spoke with reported that, regardless of their specific health requirements, those who had been receiving hormones via injections or patch were abruptly informed in July that they would start taking pills. The women claim that medical staff has informed them that SB 254’s requirement that a doctor monitor gender-affirming medications is the cause of this change. Hormone shots and patches were originally given by nurses or other medical staff. It’s unclear if state funds are still being used for “sex-reassignment prescriptions,” as the law defines them. The women are left wondering whether the position is simultaneously attempting to abide by the opposing legal and court decisions because the office has not responded to numerous inquiries.
She claimed that Bartee had been using patches ever since her soul attack in 2020. “At the age of 51 and with two stents in my stomach, I am being forced to take estrogen pills, which are not only less effective than patches but also have an inherent risk of blood clots.”
The people also mention that routine delays have occurred with their prescription refills. In addition to having negative effects on one’s physical health, fluctuating hormone levels can cause “mental anger, mood swings, crabby — flying off the control on minor things,” according to Linda Steele, a transgender woman who was imprisoned for 1979 murder and weapons convictions outside of Tallahassee. According to Steele, she and the other transgender women on her garden constantly worry that these feelings moves will result in fights with police or time spent in isolation.
Sara Maatsch, a transgender prisoner who has been charged with burglary and intended murder, said, “We have all been in full chaos.” The ladies in Maatsch’s system, she claimed, carefully monitor the news and are hoping a judge will overturn the rules. “We’re worn out. We shouldn’t be forced to fight over insignificant, basic medications.”
