WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last night, America First Legal sued the Biden Administration on behalf of a class of doctors, seeking to prohibit the Department of Health and Human Services from forcing medical professionals to provide unethical transgender-related medical services.
Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act prohibits “sex” discrimination in any health program or activity that receives federal funds. Three months ago, HHS announced that it will “interpret and enforce” section 1557 to prohibit: (1) “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation”; and (2) “discrimination on the basis of gender identity.” But nothing in section 1557 prohibits discrimination on account of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity”—and nothing in this statute requires doctors and health-care providers to deny biological reality by providing “gender-affirming” healthcare.
HHS’s interpretation of section 1557 threatens every medical provider who refuses to bow to the demands of homosexual and transgender activists. It allows anyone to file a complaint against a doctor who refuses to provide services or referrals that violate his ethical or religious beliefs, and if HHS determines that doctor engaged in discrimination based on “sexual orientation” or “gender identity,” that doctor would face significant consequences—including fines, penalties, and lack of access to patients who use federally-backed insurance plans (such as Medicare and Medicaid).
AFL is proud to represent the class of doctors in this case to stop the Biden Administration from using the government as a cudgel to advance its radical anti-science, anti-medicine, and anti-religious-freedom agenda.
Statement From America First Legal President Stephen Miller:
“In perhaps no area is it more dangerous and destructive to erase biological sex than the field of healthcare. Treatment, medicine, pharmaceuticals, surgery, and other care must comport with biological reality and anatomy—or the results can be irreversibly damaging, even lethal. There is no plausible reading of this statute that would, or ever could, compel doctors to treat biological males as females or biological females as males. By any definition, this Biden edict is unlawful, unconstitutional, and medically unconscionable. This Orwellian decree denies science, denies medical reality, denies objective academic truth, and endangers patients, children, and the whole medical profession. If we wish to maintain our status as an advanced and civilized nation, then we must safeguard the medical profession from radical woke ideologies enforced through raw government power. Doctors must be free to follow their medical conscience and to follow the medical science. America First Legal will vigorously, passionately, and relentlessly fight this Biden edict in federal court—and we will fiercely defend the rights of medical professionals and the scientific integrity of medicine itself.
Read the full lawsuit here.
To schedule an engagement with American First Legal, please email [email protected].
