Florida’s Governor is celebrating a Supreme Court decision keeping people who are transitioning genders from serving in the Armed Forces as legal challenges proceed.
“The President has clear authority as Commander in Chief of the military to ensure good order and discipline,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said as he lauded the high court for having “halted the madness.”
A Donald Trump executive order from January said “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.” Several district courts blocked the ban, but the Supreme Court is allowing it to stay in place until courts decide the merit of suits over the policy.
DeSantis has been outspoken about his own conviction that transgender people shouldn’t serve.
“The military is using your tax dollars to pay for hormones and sex change operations for people in the military,” DeSantis said when running for President in 2023.
His campaign said that, if elected, he’d no longer allow “transgender personnel to serve in the military in their preferred sex.” He would also stop providing “taxpayer funds for sex change hormones and surgeries, which cause issues with readiness.”
Also when running for President, a reporter asked DeSantis what he would do if one of his children turned out to be gay or transgender.
“Well, my children are my children,” DeSantis told TIME. “We’ll leave that — we’ll leave that between my wife and I.”
DeSantis signed legislation in 2023 banning gender-affirming care, saying it was a move to “outlaw the mutilation of minors.”
SB 254 bans physicians from providing people under the age of 18 access to any “sex reassignment prescriptions or procedures,” but contains exemptions for minors born with a “medically verifiable genetic disorder of sexual development.”
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Material from The Associated Press was used in this report. Republished with permission.
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