A federal judge has ruled that Florida’s transgender health care ban discriminates against state employees and violates their civil rights.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled Thursday that the state’s ban violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects employees and job applicants from employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

The lawsuit was filed in 2020 by three current and former state employees against the Florida Department of Management Services. The employees had challenged the denial of medically necessary treatment for their gender dysphoria under the state’s categorical exclusion of coverage for “gender reassignment or modification services or supplies.”

  • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    There really needs to be a severe punishment for passing laws that violate people’s rights like this that get overturned. The punishment can be a sliding scale based on how blatant and likely it is to be a violation.

    They just keep making the laws and then drag them out in court for years tormenting people and wasting money.

    Also maybe any law that even has the slightest remote possibility of being a violation has an automatic stay until resolved and not be at the mercy of the right judge issuing one.

    • 418_im_a_teapot@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      The appropriate punishment should be as simple as getting voted out of office. The fact that people who do this get re-elected is the result of the bitter, hateful, uninformed constituents who want this type of bigoted legislation and wasted resources. It’s sadly what the majority of people living in Florida want.

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Getting voted out isn’t really enough when you make people suffer for all the years you’ve remained in office while the law that trampled people’s rights was in effect.

        That’s the absolute bare minimum of what should, but doesn’t, happen.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I will no longer be accepting any articles about how Florida’s fascism is failing in court without a dollar amount of legal defense fees the Florida taxpayers have paid to date.

    AP, other corporate news - get your shit together.

        • ripcord@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I dunno, but when it marks the AP and Reuters and…The Internet Archive as “Center-Left” - its current source clearly has very little value.

          • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            It’s because the Overton window has shifted so far right that neutral reporting is now considered center-left. And even when factual reporting is high, it’s still possible to be biased because of what stories you choose to report on. For instance, maybe a news source is extremely accurate and adds very little opinion, but exclusively reports on topics that are on one side of the spectrum.