The new ruling vacated a federal policy forbidding discrimination against those seeking health care to reinforce their gender identity.
A federal judge struck down a Biden administration regulation that gave federal health care anti-discrimination protections to those seeking transgender-related health care.
Responding to a lawsuit brought by 15 states, U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola of the Southern District of Mississippi issued the ruling on Oct. 22.
Guirola’s ruling affects the entire United States and is not limited to the states that filed the lawsuit.
It is unclear what impact the judge’s order will have, as the regulation had not yet taken effect at the time of the ruling.
The 15 states were Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The decision concerns a May 2024 rule issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that, among other things, redefined sex discrimination to compel health care providers, Medicaid, Medicare, and state health care insurance exchanges to provide transgender-related procedures and hormone therapies and surgeries, which supporters refer to as “gender-affirming care.”
Specifically, the states challenged only the rule’s provisions that addressed gender-identity discrimination.
The Obama administration first issued the rule in 2016. In President Donald Trump’s first term, his administration reversed it. After President Joe Biden took power, his administration reinstated the rule.
At the beginning of his second term, Trump issued two executive orders that conflicted with the HHS rule.
Executive Order 14168, dated Jan. 20, states it is the policy of the federal government “to recognize two sexes, male and female.”
“Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality,” Trump said in the order.
Executive Order 14187, dated Jan. 28, says it is federal policy to “not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
