In a landmark case to be argued today, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys will be arguing on behalf of Catholic doctors at a hearing in federal district court in State of Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services.
The state of Florida and the Catholic Medical Association are challenging the federal agency’s rule change that forces medical professionals and insurance providers to perform or pay for harmful “gender-transition” procedures or face severe financial consequences. ADF attorneys joined Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody in filing suit against the Biden administration’s unlawful rule the same day it was published.
The administration’s rule change, published in May, redefines “sex” in federal health care nondiscrimination law to include “gender identity.” As announced, the rule change forces CMA members to lose federal funding and risk severe penalties for treating and referring to patients by their sex. The rule also requires Florida to follow unscientific standards of care and limits the state’s power to set protective standards of care for health professionals.
Florida and the Catholic Medical Association argue that the administration’s rule change abuses its regulatory powers under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act to force health care and medical insurance providers to classify body-altering and dangerous procedures as necessary treatment.
Challenging the Democrats’ new rule, Attorney General Ashley Moody said, “Florida passed a law to protect our children from dangerous, irreversible gender-transition drugs and surgeries. Now, Biden and his federal bureaucrats are trying to go around our child-protection law to force the state to pay for puberty blockers and gender-transition surgery for children. These rules trample states’ power to protect their own citizens and we will not stand by as Biden tries, yet again, to use the force of the federal government to unlawfully stifle Florida’s effort to protect children.”
The administration is attempting to cite Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act “which forbids covered entities, including States, from discriminating in health programs or activities ‘on the ground prohibited under…title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972’”. However, according to the complaint, “the 2024 Rules go far beyond what Section 1557 and Title IX require. The 2024 Rules attempt to require Florida to fund drugs and surgeries for “gender-transition”; unlawfully limit States’ power to set protective standards of care for health care professionals; compel states to cover these gender-transition interventions in state-administered health care programs and employee insurance plans; and prevent States from protecting vulnerable residents—including children—from dangerous medical interventions that could render them infertile for life.”
Florida, and the more than 20 additional states who prohibit hormone treatment and surgery for minors, however, are not alone in their thinking. According to the complaint, in 2016, then-President Obama’s HHS concluded not requiring national coverage of gender-reassignment surgeries due to a lack of evidence that this surgery improves health outcomes. In 2020, then-President Trump’s HHS concluded, similarly, that there was not quality evidence supporting gender-change treatments.
Suddenly, in 2022, Biden’s HHS released a document entitled “Gender-Affirming Care and Young People”, claiming now that gender-affirming care improves mental health and well-being. According to the complaint, “HHS threatened to sue anyone who disagreed with this purported ‘standard of care’.”
Citing several reasons that these new rules are both unlawful, and cause harm to the state, Florida has asked the court to: vacate the 2024 rules, issue preliminary injunctive relief enjoining enforcement, issue permanent injunctive relief, enjoining enforcement, declare that the 2024 rules are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious, and more.
“The Biden administration’s attempt to hijack the medical field is the latest example of its unlawful overreach,” said ADF Legal Counsel Allison Pope, who will be arguing before the court. “The HHS rule will harm those suffering from gender dysphoria, especially children, and punish doctors who seek to care for them. Medical professionals around the world and individuals who have undergone these experimental, body-altering procedures warn about their risks. Yet the administration is choosing ideology over science by coercing doctors to perform these dangerous, often sterilizing procedures to make people appear as the opposite sex. This rule change also contradicts legal precedent set by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. For all these reasons, we are urging the district court to halt the administration’s inappropriate and illegal rule change.”
The Catholic Medical Association is the largest association of Catholic individuals in health care with about 2,500 members nationwide in all fields of practice. CMA has a Florida statewide guild called the Florida Catholic Medical Association and seven local guilds located throughout the state.
Attorney General Ashley Moody
State of Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services
Catholic Doctors
Florida Citizens Alliance
Moms for Liberty
Florida Board of Education
Gov. Ron DeSantis
Sexual orientation
Don't Say Gay
transgenderism
Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr.
Let kids be kids education rule
Title IX Biden rule
Federal Department of Education
women's sports
gender identity
sex discrimination
Like the Department of "Education", there should be NO Department of "Health" and Human Services in our federal system. The national government was allocated defined and limited powers. The feds are, and have been, encroaching on the power of the states for far too long. And don't even get me stated on the encroachment of powers supposedly left to neither the federal or state governments but to individual citizens. We are supposed to be citizens under a Constitutional Republic NOT subject to an all powerful leviathan state.