Florida committee moves toward banning gender treatments for minors

A Florida committee on Friday approved rulemaking language to ban minors from taking hormones or getting surgery as treatments for gender dysphoria.

Made up of members from the Florida Board of Medicine and the Board of Osteopathic Medicine, the committee will vote Nov. 4 to finalize the new rule, according to Politico.

The committee decision followed a meeting in Orlando during which experts on "gender-affirming" care spoke on the subject. The outlet highlighted the concerns of Patrick Hunter, a member of the Board of Medicine, who pointed to a lack of evidence from studies to support such treatments.

"Those studies don’t exist," said, per Politico. "We don’t have high quality evidence based on that."

The move comes as Republicans nationwide move to ban gender surgeries and hormone treatments at the federal level. 

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, introduced the "Protect Children's Innocence Act" in September that would make providing gender transitional care to minors a felony and bar the use of federal funds for such endeavors.