Chris Lange, FISM News
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Companies in Florida that offer gender transition surgery coverage for their employees may soon find themselves on the hook for subsequent detransition care under a new state Senate bill.
Florida’s proposed “Reverse Woke Act,” introduced on Monday by Republican State Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, would hold employers that pay for “gender-affirming care” liable for the full cost of the same individual’s detransition health care, even if that individual is no longer in their employ. The measure would require the same of companies that pay for out-of-state travel for employees’ gender transitions.
The bill further establishes “a right of action for aggrieved persons to recover actual total costs and damages from an employer or former employer, as applicable,” essentially opening employers up to civil action lawsuits if the company covers the costs for transitioning surgeries but refuses to cover the reverse treatment.
Ingoglia said the proposed bill was intended to protect Floridians from being “used as political pawns to advance a leftist agenda for the Governor of California” — a pointed reference to the Golden State’s bill that safeguards access to gender-affirming care for minors. The bill gives the state the right to take temporary custody of children whose parents refuse to let them undergo medical gender transition.
“Woke businesses need to be held accountable when offering to pay for gender-affirming surgeries in other states, such as California, because they are nothing more than political decisions masquerading as healthcare and human resource decisions,” Ingoglia said in a press release on Monday, according to Florida Voice.
At least 27 companies have pledged to cover travel and transitioning surgery costs for Floridians in other states, per the press release.
Critics slammed the measure on social media with a stream of invectives that included the inevitable references to “Naziism,” “fascism” and the like, with one user calling the Sunshine State “the place where trans go to die” — a satirical nod to Gov. DeSantis’s recent declaration that Florida is “where woke goes to die.”
“The provisions are ridiculously broad and lack precedent in law,” Erin Reed, an independent legislative researcher wrote Monday in her “Erin in the Morning” Substack newsletter.
Ignoglia said that the requirements outlined in the bill should be a “no-brainer for companies that truly care about the health and well-being of their employees.”
The senator’s bill will be considered when the legislature reconvenes on March 7.
This article was partially informed by The Hill and Fox News reports.