First appeared on FOX: Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is suing the Biden administration over a new “radical mandate” that would require medical professionals to perform sex-reassignment surgeries, including on children, and make the state pay for them.
“Joe Biden is once again overstepping his legal authority to impose his radical transgender ideology on the American people. His Administration is threatening to hold federal funds hostage from health care providers who refuse to perform or approve harmful and irreversible transgender surgeries,” Bailey said in a statement first obtained by Fox News Digital.
Bailey, who filed the lawsuit along with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the attorneys general of Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Utah, said they were suing with taxpayer money to stop “federal bureaucrats out of touch with reality from forcing experimental sex-change procedures on Missouri health care providers.”
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The Biden administration’s new order requires health care providers to perform sex-reassignment surgeries, including on children, while also requiring states to cover the costs. (Fox News Digital)
“Doctors should not be forced to harm children,” the lawsuit states.
In April, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) updated Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to codify the prohibition on discrimination “on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability in certain health programs or activities.” This protection extends to health programs and services that receive federal funding.
The newly finalized Section 1557 redefines “sex-based” to include “gender identity” and “abortion.”
“We have clarified that the nondiscrimination policy’s prohibition on sex discrimination includes protections against various types of sex discrimination, such as pregnancy, including abortion and related medical conditions, and have revised the brackets in § 92.8(b) to explain that the provision’s reference to sex discrimination is consistent with the various types of sex discrimination, including ‘gender identity,’ described in § 92.101(a)(2).” The rules say.
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The newly finalized Section 1557 redefines “sex-based” to include “gender identity” and “abortion.” (Alison Diner/AFP via Getty Images)
The lawsuit argues that the rule “threatens to punish physicians and states that do not comply with the mandate through massive fines and exclusion from federally funded health care programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).”
“This punishment effectively denies doctors and states access to care for the most vulnerable children in low-income communities,” the lawsuit states.
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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey observes a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in Washington, DC, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024. (Graham Sloane/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Although the new rules purport to enforce Section 1557 of the ACA’s prohibition on sex discrimination, Bailey argues that neither that law nor its predecessor, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, mandates sex reassignment procedures.
The lawsuit also argues that the new rules violate the ACA and the Administrative Procedure Act and undermine free speech. Moreover, neither the new rules nor the ACA provide clear notice or consent from states and health care providers regarding the funding or delivery of gender reassignment treatments through federal health programs.
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This lawsuit is Conservative states Laws have been enacted that severely restrict access to surgical and non-surgical sex reassignment procedures for minors, and states such as Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Alabama and Florida have gone a step further by making it a felony to give a minor a sex reassignment prescription or perform a sex reassignment or other surgical procedure.
Meanwhile, several states, including California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, New York, Vermont, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maryland, Illinois and Massachusetts, have enacted “protective” laws that protect these surgeries and gender-change prescriptions for transgender people.
Fox News Digital has reached out to HHS for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Kendall Teets contributed to this report.
