Texas and four other states, along with some religious medical organizations, filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging a regulation issued by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on transgender health. The challengers say the regulation — which bans the discrimination of transgender health treatment in federally-funded services — amounts to numerous statutory and constitutional violations, including infringing on the religious liberty of doctors.
The Becket Fund — a religious freedom legal advocacy group that successfully sued the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate — is also involved with the case
The new lawsuit alleges that the HHS is forcing doctors to perform gender transition procedures on children, and that the regulation undermines both their medical judgment and religious beliefs.
“On pain of significant financial liability, the Regulation forces doctors to perform controversial and sometimes harmful medical procedures ostensibly designed to permanently change an individual’s sex—including the sex of children,” the lawsuit asserts. “Under the new Regulation, a doctor must perform these procedures even when they are contrary to the doctor’s medical judgment and could result in significant, long-term medical harm. “
The religious groups joining the states in the lawsuit are the Catholic group the Franciscan Alliance and the Christian Medical & Dental Associations. The states — which are Texas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kentucky and Kansas — argue that their sovereign power is being infringed upon by the federal regulation.
The lawsuit comes just days after Texas was successful in convincing a federal judge to block the Obama administration’s Department of Education directive banning the discrimination of transgender students in public schools.
Both cases challenge the interpretation by the Obama administration of civil rights law addressing discrimination on the basis of “sex.” The Obama administration argues “sex” can be interpreted to include gender identity, a claim Texas rebuts in both lawsuits. (An appeals court in a separate case has approved of the Obama administration’s interpretation.).
Read the complaint below:
