The Health and Human Services Department on Friday proposed a rule change that would weaken protections for transgender people under the Affordable Care Act.
The Obama administration had expanded the definition for discrimination on the basis of sex to include transgender people, and the Trump administration rule would roll that back.
“When Congress prohibited sex discrimination, it did so according to the plain meaning of the term, and we are making our regulations conform,” Roger Severino, the director of the Office of Civil Rights at HHS, said in a statement announcing the rule. “The American people want vigorous protection of civil rights and faithfulness to the text of the laws passed by their representatives.”
Transgender rights advocates worry the rule change would put up new barriers for transgender people seeking health care.
“This proposed rule is yet another outright attack from the Trump administration on the health, well-being, and survival of transgender people. Everyone should be able to go to the doctor when we need help without being turned away or denied treatment because of who we are,” Kris Hayashi, the executive director of the Transgender Law Center, said in a statement. “That’s what the law says, yet in practice many transgender people still face devastating discrimination in health care.”
“This rule dangerously encourages illegal discrimination, putting the lives of transgender people in jeopardy – particularly for trans people living with HIV, Black transgender people and people of color, trans people with disabilities, and rural and Southern trans folks,” Hayashi added.
“When Congress prohibited sex discrimination, it did so according to the plain meaning of the term,"
No wonder women are losing so many rights. After all, many laws apply to “men” only.
WTF business is it of the GOP what choices people make regarding their own bodies?
Once again, the cruelty is the point.
GOP logic: Can’t discriminate against change in gender if you don’t recognize gender can change
The GOPers and the GOP-appointed judges keep opening up a giant hole in the law for “religious freedom.” Liberals need to get more clever about taking advantage of it, building on the success of the Satanic Temple (see also John Oliver’s Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption ).
Taking advantage of “religious freedom” legislation and rulings wouldn’t require liberals to fake some beliefs and make up deities and rituals and so on. Satanic Temple got official IRS recognition as a church even though, as co-founder Lucen Greaves stated:
It seems to me that, as a member of the Satanic Temple or some similar church/religion, it would be entirely reasonable to claim that to be forced to conform to the dogma of another religion is a tremendous infringement on your own beliefs.
I think it would be entirely reasonable to claim that laws or regulations based on inaccurate beliefs or assumptions about natural phenomena (whether biological or inert or large systems of both living and non-living matter and energy) is a tremendous infringement on your religious beliefs.