evidence: Tallahassee, Florida – Today, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) civil rights organization, condemns the Florida Senate for advancing Senate Bill 254, an extreme, unprecedented attack on transgender people, their health care, and the families and health care providers who care for them. The bill is a gender-affirming care ban that would also strip parental rights from parents who support their transgender children. This bill would penalize providers by inflicting criminal penalties (including felony penalties) on providers who give gender-affirming care; it would take licenses away from those providers; and it would prohibit Medicare from covering gender-affirming care for transgender youth or adults. It would also forbid public funds, including those of a public university, public hospital, city, or county, and Medicare, from being used to provide benefits that include gender-affirming care - for transgender people of all ages. And - uniquely - it allows the state to remove trans children from their parents if they are receiving transition care by purporting to give Florida family courts jurisdiction to set aside another state’s custody determination for a young person if their parents have authorized or might authorize best practice, age-appropriate gender-affirming health care.