HEALTH
Trump Strips Obamacare Trans Health Protections
Administration fi nalizes rule allowing doctors to refuse care to trans Americans
BY MATT TRACY
Late on a Friday in
the middle of Pride
Month, the Trump administration
finalized
a long-anticipated rule wiping
out protections in healthcare
settings for transgender individuals.
The rule, which was first
proposed in May of last year,
specifically slashes a 2016 provision
of the Affordable Care
Act that included gender identity
under the definition of sex
discrimination. Under Obamacare,
hospitals were required
to offer health services equally
to trans pople and women who
have had an abortion, and
those services were required
to be covered by insurance.
The new rule, finalized on
the fourth anniversary of the
Pulse nightclub massacre
and just days after two Black
transgender women were murdered
in Ohio and Pennsylvania,
aims to give medical
professionals leeway to refuse
health services to trans people
or to conduct operations on
trans people seeking gender
confirmation surgery.
The administration’s Department
of Health and Human
Services (HHS) said in a June
12 press release announcing
the news that the agency will
enforce Section 1557 of the Affordable
Care Act “by returning
to the government’s interpretation
of sex discrimination
“according to the plain meaning
of the word ‘sex’ as male or
female and as determined by
biology.”
The administration is asserting
that a rule issued by
President Barack Obama in
➤ BRUTALITY POLICY?, from p.12
able the city is going to be, but my
instinct is there will be numerous
civil rights lawsuits.”
President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services, led by Secretary Alex Azar, is
unraveling transgender protections in healthcare.
2016 inserting the trans protections
“exceeded the scope
of authority delegated by Congress
in Section 1557.”
“In 2016, the previous administration
issued a regulation
implementing Section
1557 (the 2016 Rule) that redefined
sex discrimination to
include termination of pregnancy
and gender identity,
which it defined as “one’s internal
sense of gender, which
may be male, female, neither,
or a combination of male and
female,’” HHS wrote in a press
release.
While the rule’s finalization
represented a new step in the
administration’s attacks on
transgender people in healthcare
settings, President Donald
Trump already moved in
this direction earlier in his
presidency. The Trump team
sided with Franciscan Health,
a Christian healthcare system
that includes 14 hospitals
in Indiana and Illinois, when
Franciscan challenged the
Obama administration rule in
Shea and the mayor have defended
the NYPD’s tactics saying
they are protecting peaceful protestors
from anarchists and others
REUTERS/ KEVIN LAMARQUE
federal district court in Northern
Texas. That court is home
to conservative Judge Reed
O’Connor, who already struck
down Obamacare as unconstitutional
late in 2018.
“The United States has returned
to its longstanding position
that the term ‘sex’ in Title
VII does not refer to gender
identity, and there is no reason
why Section 1557, which
incorporates Title IX’s analogous
prohibition on ‘sex’ discrimination,
should be treated
differently,” the Trump administration
said last year in response
to the Franciscan suit.
The Obama administration
had in 0ther contexts also included
discrimination on the
basis of sexual orientation in
prohibitions on sex discrimination,
but that interpretation
never made its way into Section
1557 — something that
was likely an accident of timing.
Trump won the 2016 presidential
election and ushered
in an era of dramatic queer
rights rollbacks; a Hillary
who infi ltrate protests with the
intention of committing violence.
On June 7, the mayor noted that,
unlike many other city police forces,
Clinton administration would
undoubtedly have continued
the Obama posture of broadening
the definition of sex discrimination
across federal regulations
and policies. Under
1557 as it was written, some
gay and lesbian folks could
still have made the argument
that they faced discrimination
due to sex stereotyping, such
as the case of a doctor refusing
to care for an effeminate
man, but that protection is far
more limited in scope.
The new rule was announced
just days before the Supreme
Court announced its employment
nondiscrimination decision,
and that ruling will surely
impact how the new policy
plays out.
Even before the court ruling,
queer groups vowed to sue
the administration, including
the Human Rights Campaign
and Lambda Legal, as did New
York State Attorney General
Letitia James. Lambda Legal
described the rule as one
that would cause confusion in
healthcare settings.
“The Trump administration
has enshrined its discriminatory
interpretation into the
HHS rule book but that does
not — and cannot — actually
change the law,” Sasha Buchert,
co-director of Lambda
Legal’s Transgender Rights
Project, said. “However, this is
enough to cause confusion and
hurt our communities, especially
transgender people and
people of color who already
face elevated rates of discrimination
in health care settings.
This rule change serves no
other purpose than to target
and discriminate against LGBTQ
people. The cruelty is the
point.”
the NYPD had not used rubber
bullets, tear gas, or mounted police
and the National Guard had not
come into the city.
June 18 - June 24, 2 16 020 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
