The Biden administration cannot force a group of Catholic hospitals and doctors to cover or perform gender-transition surgeries under an ObamaCare rule prohibiting non-discrimination in health care, a court has heard federal appeal.
In a ruling released on Friday, a three-judge panel on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously found Department of Health and Social Services (HHS) violated the religious beliefs of the plaintiffs, which included a group of nuns who run health clinics for the poor and an association of Catholic medical professionals.
The judges said that if the administration applied the rule to Catholic groups, it would violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The panel upheld a permanent lower court injunction preventing HHS from enforcing the rule.
The judges said the lower court was correct in determining that “the intrusion into the Catholic plaintiffs’ exercise of religion is sufficient to demonstrate irreparable harm”.
ObamaCare prohibits sex discrimination by health care providers who receive federal funding, and the HHS rule has interpreted that prohibition to extend to discrimination based on gender identity.
The rule prohibited doctors, hospitals and other healthcare workers from denying care to someone whose sexual orientation or gender identity they disapproved of.
The Obama administration did this by expanding the health care law’s definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity for the first time. These extensions were blocked by a federal judge in 2016.
The Trump White House issued a final rule voiding the protections in June 2020but a day before the rule took effect, a federal judge blocked some aspects of the policy and said a Supreme Court ruling on workplace discrimination contradicts the new policy.
The court found that federal laws against sex discrimination in the workplace also protect gay and transgender people.
In June, the Biden administration proposed a rule to strengthen ObamaCare rules prohibiting discrimination based on gender as well as people seeking reproductive health services, including those who have had abortions.
