Attorneys General Sue Biden’s HHS for Coercing Healthcare Providers to Perform Trans Surgeries

(FeaturedHeadlines.com) The state attorneys general of Texas and Montana are challenging a US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rule that forces doctors to provide transgender treatments to minors. The joint lawsuit contends that the policy is unconstitutional and seeks to strike it down.

The HHS rule also forces state governments to pay for the transgender treatments, including puberty blockers and sex-change surgeries, through Medicaid and Medicare programs. Healthcare providers could lose their federal funding if they refuse to comply with the policy.

HHS justified the policy using a provision of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded healthcare programs. HHS includes gender identity in its view of sex-based discrimination.

The Biden administration is forcing “radical gender ideology” on Americans, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen said. Healthcare providers should not be forced to perform life-altering, experimental procedures under the threat of losing federal funding, nor should state governments be forced to pay for treatments that leave children with irreversible damage, according to Knudsen.

The Biden administration is attempting to use agency rulemaking to sidestep the Constitution and promote unpopular, unlawful policies, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said. The lawsuit is not the first that Paxton has filed in an effort to stop the Biden administration’s promotion of gender ideology.

Paxton successfully blocked the Department of Education from forcing Texas schools to include gender identity as a protected class under Title IX policies. A federal court prevented Biden’s Education Department from forcing Texas schools to allow biological men into women’s spaces and sports. Similar to the HHS policy, schools would have lost federal funding if they failed to comply with the rule.

Paxton’s lawsuit took nearly a year to succeed in the court system. It is unclear how long the joint lawsuit against HHS will take to resolve, but in the meantime, healthcare providers could be forced to provide transgender treatments to minors at taxpayers’ expense, lest they lose critical funding.

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