Federal court blocks Trump administration rule erasing health care protections for transgender people

Lawmakers and activists celebrate judge's decision to stop the controversial rule from going into effect in the 11th hour as a 'victory for the LGBTQ community and the rule of law'

US District Court Judge Frederic Block cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in June on job discrimination while imposing a preliminary injunction on a new HHS rule that would roll back protections for transgender patients across the country. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

With just one day left before it went into effect, a federal judge has blocked a new rule created by the Trump administration that would have erased health care protections for transgender people.

US District Court Judge Frederic Block cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in June on job discrimination for the preliminary injunction on Monday.

“When the Supreme Court announces a major decision, it seems a sensible thing to pause and reflect on the decision’s impact,” the judge wrote. “Since [Health and Human Services] has been unwilling to take that path voluntarily, the court now imposes it.”

The Trump administration’s new rule — which would have gone into effect Tuesday — rolled back protections for transgender patients facing discrimination from doctors and hospitals, as well as insurance companies.

But the rule may no longer be valid after the Supreme Court extended sex discrimination protections to transgender Americans during the historic June ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga.

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, delivered the court’s 6-3 decision in that case, writing: “An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.”

He added: “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what (civil rights law) forbids.”

Two transgender women represented by the Human Rights Campaign filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration while seeking to block to new rule from going into effect. Now, the judge must hear arguments from both sides before issuing a final decision.

Still, the preliminary injunction — which temporarily blocks the rule from going into effect before the judge makes his final decision — was celebrated as a “victory for the LGBTQ community and the rule of law” by top Democrats and activists, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying in a statement: “The administration’s actions were in blatant violation of the Affordable Care Act’s protections and the Supreme Court’s recent ... decision, which affirmed that discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ included sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Supporters of the new rule said that protections afforded to transgender people created under Barack Obama were an overreach.

Roger Severino, director of the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services, said while announcing the proposed rule in June 2019: “We're going back to the plain meaning of those terms, which is based on biological sex."