3K healthcare workers sue Biden admin. over mandate forcing them to perform sex-change surgeries By Michael Gryboski, Christian Post Reporter
GNN Note – The feel-good story of the week! /END
Two associations representing 3,000 medical professionals and an individual doctor based in Tennessee have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s Transgender Mandate, arguing that it violates federal conscience protection laws.
The American College of Pediatricians and the Catholic Medical Association, along with Dr. Jeanie Dassow of Chattanooga, filed the suit last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
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At issue in the court case is the HHS’ current interpretation of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which bars sex discrimination, to include requiring doctors to perform elective gender-transition procedures, including cosmetic surgeries such as double mastectomies, phalloplasties and orchiectomies (testicle removal).
Defendants named in the suit include the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, the HHS Office for Civil Rights and Robinsue Frohboese, acting director and principal deputy in the HHS OCR.
“This case challenges whether the federal government can make medical doctors perform gender-transition surgeries, prescribe gender-transition drugs, and speak and write about patients according to gender identity, rather than biological reality—regardless of doctors’ medical judgment or conscientious objections,” noted the introduction of the lawsuit.
The suit argues that the HHS rule, known as the Transgender Mandate, violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as the First Amendment’s Free Speech and Free Exercise of Religion Clauses.
HHS first announced its revised interpretation of the statute in May. The so-called Transgender Surgery Mandate was first implemented by HHS under former President Barack Obama in 2016, but the Trump administration repealed the mandate in 2018.
“It is the position of the Department of Health and Human Services that everyone – including LGBTQ people – should be able to access health care, free from discrimination or interference, period,” said Becerra in the announcement.
Becerra warned that fears over discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity “can lead individuals to forgo care, which can have serious negative health consequences.”
Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Ryan Bangert, who is helping to represent the plaintiffs, said in a statement released Thursday that the HHS was “grossly overreaching its authority” by issuing the mandate.
