Court Blocks Trump's Rollback Of Transgender Protections In Health Care

A federal court on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration's plan to eliminate transgender protections in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare.

Whitman-Walker Clinic v. HHS is one of several legal challenges to the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) reversal of an Obama-era regulation that expanded the definition of sex as it relates to discrimination in health care to include gender identity. HHS's new rule defines sex as “determined by biology.”

Plaintiffs in the case are represented by Lambda Legal.

Judge James E. Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia granted Lambda Legal's request for a preliminary injunction, blocking key aspects of HHS' rule.

“[T]he court enjoined the rule's elimination of the definition of discrimination on the basis of sex and the rule's incorporation of Title IX's religious exemption,” Lambda Legal wrote in a release. “The court also held that the broad coalition of plaintiffs Lambda Legal represents has standing to challenge most aspects of the rule.”

In granting the injunction, Boasberg wrote: “[D]enying an injunction would impede the public interest by threatening the health of LGBTQ individuals at large, some of whom will likely develop increasingly acute conditions on account of their delaying necessary care or refraining from transparent communication with providers out of fear of discrimination. There is clearly a robust public interest in safeguarding prompt access to health care. The COVID-19 pandemic only reinforces the importance of that public interest and the concomitant need to ensure the availability and provision of care on a nondiscriminatory basis.”

Lambda Legal said that the rule is “unlawful and endangers people's lives.”

“This administration’s health care discrimination rule is just another example of its disdain for LGBTQ lives and the law,” Lambda Legal attorney Omar Gonzalez-Pagan said. “The rule is unlawful and endangers people’s lives, plain and simple.”

Last month, a federal judge ruled against the Trump administration in a separate case challenging the rule. U.S. District Judge Frederic Block cited the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Bostock, which expanded the definition of sex in federal law to include gender identity, in his ruling.