The DeSantis administration in Florida and a Catholic medical group filed suit Tuesday against the Biden administration to block a rule that they argue requires doctors to violate their conscience by providing gender transition medicine.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and the Catholic Medical Association sued in federal court in Tampa against a new rule published Monday by the Department of Health and Human Services to expand the definition of sex discrimination under Obamacare to include “gender identity.”
The rule also includes the elective termination of a pregnancy under the umbrella of “pregnancy or related conditions,” but this is not addressed in the lawsuit.
Lawsuit documents from the plaintiffs contend that not only does the rule violate the religious liberty protections of doctors who object to the procedures, it also violates existing state law prohibiting gender transition medicine for minors.
“Florida passed a law to protect our children from dangerous, irreversible gender transition drugs and surgeries,” Moody said in a statement. “Now, Biden and his federal bureaucrats are trying to go around our child-protection law to force the state to pay for puberty blockers and gender-transition surgery for children.”
The lawsuit also notes that the policy regarding Obamacare coverage of gender transition surgeries was evaluated in 2016 and 2020 by HHS under the Obama and Trump administrations, respectively. Both evaluations came to the conclusion that there was not enough evidence of surgical intervention improving overall health outcomes for patients.
In 2022, President Joe Biden signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to ensure access to gender transition medicine and to further protect transgender people from discrimination.
Biden has also signed several executive orders instructing his administration to broaden access to abortion and contraception following the Supreme Court’s decision that there is no constitutional right to abortion in June 2022.
The plaintiffs argue that the rule is “arbitrary and capricious” and that it requires religious physicians to violate their beliefs regarding the importance of biological sex compared to gender identity.
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“CMA and its members hold the position that gender-transition procedures are unethical and dangerous,” the lawsuit filing reads. “Providing, facilitating, referring for, or endorsing gender-transition efforts violates their medical views, their core religious beliefs, and their oath to ‘do no harm.’”
In reference to the provisions on abortion coverage, the rule explicitly addresses the religious liberty of physicians and healthcare professionals in refusing to perform an abortion. The text of the rule is less clear in its references to gender transition medicine.
