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A federal judge struck down Florida’s prohibition on Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care, the second decision to upend restrictions put into place at the urging of Gov. Ron DeSantis. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle on Wednesday ruled against the ban by using some of the same conclusions and language that he used in another recent decision where he determined three Florida transgender minors could receive “puberty blockers” and other types of gender-affirming care despite a state-enacted prohibition on such treatment for those under the age of 18. In both rulings, Hinkle has stated that “gender identity is real. The record makes this clear.” (Fineout, 6/21)

The Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine on Tuesday approved an emergency rule that will allow children and adults to continue obtaining gender-affirming treatments under certain conditions. Physicians will be able to renew orders for puberty blockers and hormone therapy so long as no changes are made to the prescriptions. (6/21)

Minors in Ohio would be prohibited from receiving gender-affirming care and transgender student-athletes would be banned from participating in girls’ and women’s sports under a multifaceted proposal that cleared the state’s Republican-dominated House on Wednesday. The measure folded together two contentious bills that could drastically change the way LGBTQ+ youth live in the state, and it has parents of transgender children scrambling to figure out how to care for them as the proposal heads to the GOP-led Senate. (Hendrickson, 6/21)

Proposals to ban or to restrict access to gender-affirming health care for transgender youth advanced Wednesday in both chambers of North Carolina’s Republican-controlled General Assembly in the final weeks of the session. The House voted 66-47 along party lines for a bill prohibiting public health care facilities, such as public hospitals or University of North Carolina affiliates, from performing any surgical gender transition procedure on a minor, or providing them with puberty-blocking drugs or cross-sex hormones. It also prohibits using state funds to pay for gender-transition procedures starting Oct. 1 and removes access to care for trans youth who are already receiving that treatment at a state facility. (Schoenbaum, 6/22)

Oregon lawmakers on Wednesday officially passed amended versions of the two bills — relating to guns, and abortion and gender-affirming care, respectively — that were at the center of a six-week Republican walkout. Their final passage — coming the week after Republicans stopped their boycott and just days before the end of the legislative session on June 25 — highlighted the partisan hurdles that were overcome to bring the GOP walkout to an end. (Rush, 6/21)

“The idea that asking a trans athlete to do things to create a perceived level playing field is actually asking them to do something we don’t ask of cisgender athletes,” said Eric Vilain, a pediatrician and geneticist at UC Irvine. “Just that we ask trans people to do that is a disadvantage.” Vilain mentioned how the testosterone threshold has continued to be lowered by many organizing bodies, making trans participation nearly impossible across women’s sports, despite cisgender women often having higher amounts of testosterone. (Ingemi, 6/21)

Democratic governors and state lawmakers across the country are mobilizing against a surge of Republican restrictions on transgender health care by establishing their states as sanctuaries for gender-affirming care. Earlier this month, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore signed an executive order making Maryland the 11th state, plus the District of Columbia, to declare itself a sanctuary. A bill in New York has cleared the legislature and is awaiting the signature of Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul. (Hernández, 6/22)

Misinformation about what gender-affirming care is — and is not — has grown more rampant and has been increasingly weaponized. Transgender Americans feel like their health care is being used in a political tug-of-war as state lawmakers, members of Congress, super PACs and news outlets mischaracterize medical services that have existed for decades. So what is gender-affirming care, exactly? And why is it important? (Rummler and Sosin, 6/21)

Elon Musk said the words “cis” and “cisgender” are now considered slurs on Twitter and suggested that “repeated, targeted” use of those words could be subject to suspensions. ... The word cisgender is commonly used to refer to people who are not transgender or gender-fluid. Merriam-Webster defines the word as “of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth.” (Fortinsky, 6/21)