A Texas court has dented President Obama’s legacy of promoting alternative sexual lifestyles, including transgenderism, blocking a rule that would force doctors to do sex-change operations even if it would violate their religious beliefs or if they believe it would harm the patient.
This case was brought by the Becket Fund on behalf of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, the Franciscan Alliance and the states of Texas, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska and Wisconsin.
Several other cases have challenged the mandate, including one brought on behalf of the Religious Sisters of Mercy, Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center in Jackson, Minnesota; Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center in Alma, Mississippi; SMP Health System; the University of Mary; and North Dakota.
The change, imposed by Obama through the redefinition of “sex” in administrative rules, violates the Administrative Procedure Act by contradicting existing law and probably violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, according to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor’s weekend ruling.
He issued an injunction ordering the government not to enforce the rule.
The rule, which had been issued under the Obama’s Affordable Care Act, manipulated the definition of “sex” as it has been used in federal law for decades to include whatever gender a person believes himself to be, creating a ripple effect of cataclysmic changes throughout health care’s standards for operating.
The judge said the plaintiff’s claim that “the rule’s interpretation of sex discrimination pressures doctors to deliver healthcare in a manner that violate their religious freedom and thwarts their independent medical judgment and will require burdensome changes to their health insurance plans.”
He noted the government was insisting that “prohibited sex discrimination” included refusing to provide abortions and refusing to do surgery to “transition” a male to a female or vice versa.
“This is a common-sense ruling: The government has no business forcing private doctors to perform procedures that the government itself recognizes can be harmful, particularly to children, and that the government exempts its own doctors from performing,” said Lori Windham, senior counsel at Becket Law.
“Today’s ruling ensures that doctors’ best medical judgment will not be replaced with political agendas and bureaucratic interference.”
The decision protects more than 900,000 doctors – “nearly every doctor in the U.S,” according to Becket – from being required to “perform gender transition procedures on children.”
Obama’s plan also would have cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $1 billion, the group said.
While the government’s doctors in the military are not required to follow such a rule, other doctors would have been, Becket said, and would have faced “potential lawsuits or job loss” for their opinion that “gender reassignment surgery” might not improve health outcomes.
“This court ruling is an across-the-board victory that will ensure that deeply personal medical decisions, such as gender transition procedures, remain between families and their doctor,” said Windham.
The judge found: “Prior to the passage of [Obamacare] in 2010 and for more than forty years after the passage of Title IX in 1972, no federal court or agency had concluded ‘sex’ should be defined to include gender identity.”
Martin Nussbaum of the Catholic Benefits Association, which is involved in one of the additional lawsuits, said Trump will be able to help in the fight.
“Just as [Obama’s rule] was promulgated by HHS, a new regulation can be proposed, and it can even have an effective date on the day it’s proposed that would undo that particular regulation,” he told the Washington Times.
He said there have been some court rulings from Obama-appointed judges that will need more than just a rule change to alter.
The Obama administration also deliberately left out a provision, common in health care regulations, that exempts health-care providers whose religious beliefs would be violated by the requirements.
The government admitted at a hearing it would be “‘very difficult to imag[in]e’ any medical justification for a categorical exclusion of health services or coverage of all transition-related procedures,” the judge said.
He pointed out that Texas “would risk losing more than $42.4 billion in federal funds” under the rule change.
He found that a preliminary injunction halting the rule was the best answer, since the plaintiffs are likely to succeed.
WND reported that Beckett cites a transgender information website that reports “up to 94 percent of children with gender dysphoria (77 to 94 percent in one set of studies and 73 to 88 percent in another) will grow out of their dysphoria naturally and live healthy lives without the need for surgery or lifelong hormone regimens.”
The case is the result of Obama’s change in the historical meaning of the word “sex.”
“For decades, across multiple federal statutes, Congress has consistently used the term ‘sex’ to refer to an individual’s status as male or female, as determined by a person’s biological sex at birth. But in the regulation, HHS redefines ‘sex’ to include ‘an individual’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female, and which may be different from an individual’s sex assigned at birth,'” the plaintiffs argued.
The Obama administration has done this “despite the fact that Congress has repeatedly rejected similar attempts to redefine ‘sex’ through legislation.”
Federal courts mostly also have rejected such efforts, the complaint notes.
Separately, a federal court also has refused to allow Obama’s orders that schools allow boys who think they’re girls to use girls’ locker rooms and restrooms, and vice versa.
WND also reported just last month dozens of prominent Christian leaders have signed onto a campaign protesting the Obama administration’s special protections for alternative sexual lifestyles.
The new letter, online at the Colson Center, warns that the laws are a “serious threat” to the “fundamental freedoms guaranteed to every person.”
“We affirm that every individual is created in the image of God and as such should be treated with love, compassion, and respect. We also affirm that people are created male and female, that this complementarity is the basis for the family centered on the marital union of a man and a woman, and that the family is the wellspring of human flourishing. We believe that it is imperative that our nation preserve the freedoms to speak, teach, and live out these truths in public life without fear of lawsuits or government censorship,” said the letter, signed by leaders from Daniel Akin, president of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary to Louisiana College President Rick Brewer.
“In recent years, there have been efforts to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classifications in the law – either legislatively or through executive action. These unnecessary proposals, often referred to as SOGI policies, threaten basic freedoms of religion, conscience, speech, and association; violate privacy rights; and expose citizens to significant legal and financial liability for practicing their beliefs in the public square. In recent years, we have seen in particular how these laws are used by the government in an attempt to compel citizens to sacrifice their deepest convictions on marriage and what it means to be male and female—people who serve everyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, but who cannot promote messages, engage in expression, or participate in events that contradict their beliefs or their organization’s guiding values.”
Others among the dozens of key leaders who have signed “Preserve Freedom, Reject Coercion” are Robert Benne of the Institute of Lutheran Theology, Thomas Buchanan of Touchstone Magazine, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, National Religious Broadcasters chief Jerry A. Johnson, The Master’s University leader John MacArthur, best-selling author Eric Metaxas, John Stonestreet of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview and Care Net CEO Roland Warren.