Transgender Reaassignment Surgery Under Obamacare Blocked Nationwide
The Texas Attorney General won a nationwide preliminary injunction to block a new Obamacare mandate requiring taxpayers to fund transgender reassignment surgeries and abortions. The new rule which defines “sex” as a state of mind was scheduled to take effect January 1, 2017.
On Saturday, a federal district court judge granted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request to stop the Obama administration’s new federal health rules that would force the Employees Retirement System of Texas to amend its insurance coverage to provide for gender reassignment and abortion. There are 500,000 employees that participate in the coverage.
In July, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services implemented a new rule that defined the term “sex” in the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) to include a state of mind, not a biological fact.
A statement released by the Texas Attorney General on Sunday says that “The Obama administration is attempting to redefine the law so that the term ‘sex’ means one’s ‘internal sense of gender which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female,’ even though the president lacks the authority to rewrite the law.” When Congress enacted the law for Obamacare, it used the term “sex” as a biological category.
Paxton says that the impact of the new rule on the state and health care workers is huge because it forces doctors and medical workers to provide sex transition services and it may be against their medical judgment or religious beliefs to do so. The AG says that if a health care doctor or worker chose to refer a patient to another medical provider, they would be in violation of the new rule unilaterally implemented by the Obama Administration. Paxton says “This runs roughshod over laws in Texas and other states that protect the independent medical judgment of doctors, which ensures the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship.”
“This striking example of federal overreach under Obamacare would force many doctors, hospitals and other health care providers in Texas to participate in sex-reassignment surgeries and treatments, even if it violates their best medical judgment or their religious beliefs,” Attorney General Paxton said. “I will always fight to protect the constitutional rights of Texans.”
The move to define sex in this manner is consistent with the Obama Administration’s “gender fluidity” mandate, as reported by Breitbart Texas, that school and school districts must allow students to use bathroom and shower facilities consistent with the gender that they identify with on a particular day. If school officials did not comply with the federal government’s directive, they risk losing federal funding. Texas leads a 13-state coalition against the Obama Administration’s transgender public school restrooms directive. As reported by Breitbart Texas in mid-October, the federal judge ruled that a preliminary injunction against the Obama transgender school bathroom mandate applies nationwide.
Lana Shadwick is a writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2.
Nationwide Injunction on Obamacare Requiring Taxpayers to Fund Transgender Reassignment Surgery by lanashadwick on Scribd