WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that America First Legal may proceed with its lawsuit challenging the Biden Admistration’s attempt to force doctors and medical professionals to engage in the sterilization and genital mutilation of children, which flouts every imaginable principle of medical ethics as well as the duty of physicians and medical professionals to do no harm.
Last year, the Biden Administration announced that it would start interpreting Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex,” to prohibit discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” even though these terms are nowhere to be found in the statute, and even though Congress has regularly rejected such amendments to federal anti-discrimination law. The Biden Administration’s interpretation of section 1557 will compel doctors and medical professionals to prescribe puberty blockers to children upon request and provide referrals for sex-change operations to any child who asks for one—even though these treatments lead to permanent and irreversible sterilization.
The Biden Administration claims that it can force health-care providers to become complicit in the sterilization and castration of children because a statutory prohibition on “sex” discrimination will necessarily prohibit discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”—and will therefore require health-care providers to provide any treatment demanded by a homosexual or transgender patient. This contention is absurd, and it was expressly rejected by the Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County. Bostock holds that discrimination against homosexual or transgender individuals qualifies as “sex” discrimination only when the outcome would have changed if the individual has been a member of the opposite biological sex. It does not prevent doctors from categorically refusing to provide puberty blockers or referrals for sex-change operations to members of each biological sex.
The federal district court correctly found that the plaintiff physicians are suffering injury from the Biden Administration’s announced interpretation of section 1557 and that they face a credible threat of prosecution over their refusal to provide puberty blockers and referrals for sex-reassignment surgeries to children. The court also found that delaying review of the Biden Administration’s interpretation of section 1557 would cause hardship to the plaintiffs and allowed the plaintiffs to proceed with their lawsuit against the federal government.
The Biden Administration should be ashamed for using our children as props in their social experiment and for threatening our nation’s doctors, who swore an oath to do no harm to their patients. America First Legal will continue fighting this egregious policy in court. We will not let unelected bureaucrats force these insane policies on our children and our doctors.
Statement From America First Legal President, Stephen Miller:
“America First Legal is on the leading edge of the struggle to stop Biden from forcing gender confusion, chemical sterilization and surgical castration on our children. We will not idly watch as the Biden Administration threatens doctors who will not harm children in permanent and irreparable ways. We will preserve the rights of doctors and families to protect America’s children,” Stephen Miller said.
Read the decision here.
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