In a rarely used move, a Florida House committee on Monday gave permission to its chairman to issue subpoenas to two medical groups that support gender-affirming care for children.
The Republican-controlled House Health & Human Services Committee voted along party lines to allow Chairman Randy Fine, R-Brevard County, to subpoena records from the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Florida Psychiatric Society.
Fine told the committee he intends to issue the subpoenas, requested by House Speaker Paul Renner, within 24 hours and ask the medical groups to turn over sought-after information before the legislative session ends on May 5.
The decision to issue the subpoenas is among a series of moves by lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantisâ administration targeting transgender people and the LGBTQ community. The House last week approved a bill (SB 254) that would make it a crime for doctors to use gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy or surgeries to treat children diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The Senate is expected to pass the measure, which largely would enshrine into law state medical boardsâ rules about such treatment. DeSantis has pledged to sign it.
The planned subpoenas are aimed at getting information related to guidelines established by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, and the Endocrine Society. Dozens of medical groups â including the two Florida groups targeted by the House â point to the WPATH guidelines, which have been revised eight times over the past two decades, to support gender-affirming care.
The request for information from the Florida medical groups comes amid legal wrangling over records. That wrangling has occurred in a lawsuit challenging the DeSantis administrationâs prohibition against Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care for children and adults.
A federal judge in February sided with the state and ordered national medical groups to provide testimony about how the guidelines about gender-affirming care were established. The groups have appealed the ruling.
In a letter to the House committee, Renner said medical groups were âfighting vigorously to avoid any meaningful inquiry or disclosureâ in the Medicaid lawsuit.
âYet it appears that the medical organizations who create and endorse guidelines on a contentious issue fraught with scientific uncertainty have gone to great lengths to avoid scrutiny and to keep the public (and their duly elected representatives) in the dark regarding the process by which these âconsensusâ guidelines were developed,â wrote Renner, R-Palm Coast.
Fine, who also helped sponsor a measure aimed at preventing children from attending drag shows, has made blocking gender-affirming care for children one of his priorities. His committee this year held a workshop on the issue with a panel of experts who all opposed the treatment.
âThe idea is to bring into the light the so-called universally accepted, unambiguous, clear-cut evidence that supports these things. Frankly, I find it shocking that we have to have a subpoena to do this. If I was someone who was so confident in my views on the science in the world, Iâd certainly be happy to share it. But these organizations, for whatever reason, are unwilling to and so we're going to make them,â he said before Mondayâs vote.
The Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics had not received the subpoena Monday afternoon.
âWe do not have a comment at this time. Our board will discuss how to respond to the subpoena once we receive it,â the chapterâs executive director, Alicia Adams, said in an email.
The guidelines were based on years of research and input from expert clinicians, Madeline Deutsch, who is the president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health and is an author of the WPATH guidelines, told The News Service of Florida.
Data that supports gender-affirming care wouldnât convince lawmakers such as Fine to support the treatment, she indicated.
âIf there were five randomized, double-blinded, controlled-prospective trials with data collected over 20 years, I still think they would be like, âYeah, but how do we really know?ââ said Deutsch, who also serves as medical director of the University of California-San Francisco Gender Affirming Health Program. âYou have a situation where legislators have become interested in becoming scientists and getting into the weeds of directing science, and thatâs not something thatâs customarily done.â
The WPATH guideline âis a consensus document that involved contributions from dozens of experts from around the globe,â she said.
âAnd people are passing laws all over this country trying to ban this care from being offered. ⌠It doesnât matter what we say, youâre still going to go after us,â she said. âWe have this thoroughly developed scientific document and if youâre a scientist, you would look at it.â
The committeeâs action Monday gave Fine the permission to write and issue the subpoenas, but Democrats criticized the procedure.
âYouâre putting our members in a difficult position to vote on something they canât see, they canât read, they donât understand the far-reaching impact of,â Rep. Kelly Skidmore, D-Boca Raton, said.
Rep. Ashley Gantt, a Miami Democrat who is a lawyer, likened the committeeâs search for information to what was known as the Johns Committee, a Florida legislative investigative panel that sought to expose communists and gay people at state universities in the 1950s and 1960s.
Refusing to comply with a legislative subpoena could result in 90 days in jail or a fine of up $1,000, Gantt said.
âIs this reminiscent of the Johns Committee and how they went searching for different things and to no avail? We had the opportunity to invite these organizations to come before the committee, to speak before the committee, but we didnât do that,â she said.
But Fine argued that âthere are legitimate questions about the so-called scienceâ of gender-affirming care for minors.
âThey should want to show why weâre wrong, but they donât. And that should raise a question,â he said. âAnd those of you who think that the bills that weâre passing and the things that weâre doing in order to protect our children, that weâre done, Iâve got news for you. Weâre just getting started now.â