“After months of demonizing and targeting transgender students, it seems he has decided that all transgender people must be the target of his machination”.
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AUSTIN, Texas Texas and four other states sued the Obama administration on Tuesday over extending its healthcare nondiscrimination law to transgender individuals, saying the move “represents a radical invasion of the federal bureaucracy into a doctor’s medical judgment”.
Those filing the lawsuit claim, “The regulation forces doctors to perform controversial and sometimes harmful medical procedures ostensibly created to permanently change an individual’s sex including the sex of children”.
Ramping up its fight over the rights of transgender people, Texas is expected to file a lawsuit Tuesday against the federal government over a regulation prohibiting discrimination against transgender individuals in some health programs.
The new regulations only apply to entities that receive federal funds, but the religiously affiliated healthcare providers claim that the new rules could put their doctors and other employees in a position where they are compelled to give treatments that contradict their religious beliefs, such as “hormone therapies, gender-reassignment surgery or hysterectomies for transgender men”.
Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said the suit addresses an attempt by the Obama administration to expand the definition of legal terms beyond that intended by Congress.
The impact of this new rule on Texas and health care workers is significant. The federal rule on nondiscrimination in health care prohibits denying or limiting coverage for transgender individuals, including health services related to gender transition. Under the new rule, a physician that believes that certain treatments are not in a patient’s best medical interests may be in violation of federal law. And a physician that, for religious or conscientious reasons can not perform a particular procedure, chooses to instead refer a patient to another health care provider may also be determined to be in violation of this new rule.
They argue the medical groups would be forced to violate their religious beliefs “and perform harmful medical transition procedures or else suffer massive financial liability”, according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. “It is both appalling and illegal for the federal government to force Kentucky taxpayers to foot the bill for sex-change operations”.
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Paxton, who took office past year, said it’s the 13th lawsuit he’s been “forced to bring against the Obama Administration’s continued threats on constitutional rights of Texans”.
