The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is representing the American College of Pediatricians to join seven states in suing the Biden administration over a rule imposed by the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department that compels medical professionals and insurance providers to perform and fund “gender-affirming care” treatments for children.
The move comes as various lawsuits have been filed to protect children from those seeking to push puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgeries on kids suffering from gender dysphoria.
The ADF’s lawsuit is aimed at preventing the state from forcing medical professionals to prescribe treatments they do not support.
In May, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a new rule under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act that requires doctors to act against their sound medical judgment and perform harmful, often sterilizing procedures to make people, including children, appear to be the opposite sex, even if state law restricts these procedures. Additionally, the new rule requires insurance coverage for these procedures; coerces specific gender-related medical speech and the use of inaccurate pronouns; and forces medical facilities to provide access to sex-specific spaces based on gender identity.
“The Biden administration’s attempt to hijack medicine is the latest example of its unlawful overreach,” said ADF Senior Counsel Julie Marie Blake. “The HHS rule will harm those suffering from gender dysphoria, particularly children, and punish doctors who seek to care for them. Medical professionals around the world and individuals who have undergone these experimental, body-altering procedures are warning about their risks. Yet the Biden administration is working to force doctors to perform these harmful, often sterilizing procedures to make people appear as the opposite sex. We are urging the court to halt the administration’s vast overreach in health care.”
The lawsuit (linked above) argues that medical professionals “should not be compelled to harm children,” and that “This radical mandate will hurt children.”
The complaint alleges that HHS is using threats to coerce doctors and states into adhering to progressive gender ideology. The attorneys raise concerns that the rule could negatively affect children from poor families.
HHS threatens to punish doctors and states who do not comply with the mandate by imposing huge financial penalties and excluding them from federally funded healthcare programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), according to the lawsuit.
“This punishment would effectively preclude doctors and States from providing healthcare for the most vulnerable children in low-income communities,” the document reads.
The ADF also argues that the rule violates the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and “the structural principles of federalism, and the freedom of speech.”
The lawsuit reads:
“Congress did not authorize any of this. The rule purports to implement the sex-discrimination prohibition in Section 1557 of the ACA, but there is no gender-transition mandate in that statute nor in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 from which it is derived."
HHS’ rule also did not “satisfy the constitutional requirements of clear notice for such a mandate,” according to the legal filing. “The States and healthcare providers did not agree to provide, pay for, or affirm gender-transition procedures when they began Medicaid, Medicare, and CHIP.”
The filing points out that “courts have thrice struck down similar HHS efforts to force healthcare providers and health plans to provide or pay for these dangerous life-altering procedures,” and accuses the department of being “unwilling to let multiple adverse judgments stand it the way of ideology.”
That last part is key. ADF pinpointed the problem perfectly. This is not about helping children with their mental health problems. It is about pushing the notion that men can become women and vice versa. They are more concerned with convincing the nation that people can be born in the wrong bodies than they are about making sure children are healthy.
Moreover, the financial incentive cannot be ignored. The gender industry is quite lucrative at the moment, and folks are milking it for all it is worth. The ADF’s lawsuit must succeed, as well as other lawsuits filed against the Biden administration's efforts to foist gender ideology on the nation. This could very well be yet another turning point in the right direction.
