A Texas judge has put a halt to a new rule issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which interprets “sex” discrimination to mean that hospitals, insurance companies and other health care entities that receive federal funds must perform abortions and sex reassignment surgeries, even if doing so violates their religious beliefs.The Washington Times is reporting on the last minute reprieve granted to those who are objecting to the Obama Administration’s decision to expand interpretation of Title IX and other federal directives barring discrimination on the basis of “sex” to include “gender identity” and “termination of pregnancy.” The new interpretation, which was to go into effect on Sunday, would force religious doctors and hospitals to perform abortions and transgender surgeries in spite of their beliefs.
However, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, who is the same judge who blocked President Obama’s order compelling public schools to permit bathroom and locker room access to students on the basis of perceived gender, issued a temporary restraining order to halt enforcement of the new mandate because the HHS lacks a basis for interpreting Obamacare’s prohibition against “sex” discrimination so broadly.
“Prior to the passage of the [Affordable Care Act] in 2010 and for more than forty years after the passage of Title IX in 1972, no federal court or agency had concluded ‘sex’ should be defined to include gender identity,” Mr. O’Connor wrote in his decision.
The lawsuit was brought by the Franciscan Alliance, a religious healthcare network that operates 14 hospitals in Indiana and Illinois, and was joined by eight states.
According to the Times, the Catholic Benefits Association, a group of Catholic hospitals, dioceses and other entities, also filed a separate lawsuit against the HHS rule last week.
Douglas G. Wilson, CEO of the Catholic Benefits Association, told the Times that the rule not only disregards the religious beliefs of Catholic hospitals, which make up one-sixth of hospital health care in the nation, but strips doctors of any say in determining which procedures are appropriate and which are not.
“Every hospital in our country has a medical staff and is required to have an organized medical staff, and the purpose for that medical staff is primarily and almost solely to ensure patient safety and the quality of care,” Mr. Wilson said.
“And it’s a frightening aspect of this whole initiative that that process has been effectively taken out of the hands of the medical staff and decided by a federal agency, which has now determined who can and can’t do it, who will and won’t do it and who must participate,” he said.
Martin Nussbaum, the group’s general counsel, said he hopes Mr. Trump will taking a sweeping approach to his predecessor’s actions, rescinding guidances issued by the Obama administration redefining “sex” to mean “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” in federal antidiscrimination legislation.
“President-elect Trump and his appointees can actually do a lot to help in this area,” Mr. Nussbaum said. “Just as Section 1557 was promulgated by HHS, a new regulation can be proposed, and it can even have an effective date on the day it’s proposed that would undo that particular regulation."
The bad news is that because many judges who were appointed by the Obama administration have already begun to codify the rule, this battle will ultimately have to be fought in the courts rather than just dismissed with a simply stroke of a pen.
A case in point is Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled in favor of a transgender female student who wanted to use the boy’s restroom at a Virginia high school.
“That case was decided by three 4th Circuit judges who were appointees of the incumbent president,” Mr. Nussbaum told the Times. “And what they looked at were regulations saying ‘sex’ means ‘gender identity.’ And they said we, the Obama appointees, must defer to the Obama agencies that said ‘sex’ means this, and therefore it became law.
The good news is that President Trump will be able to influence the way Title IX laws are interpreted by his appointments to the judiciary, in particular to the U.S. Supreme Court which has already agreed to hear the Gloucester County case this year.
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