The Donald Trump administration last week stepped on the gas pedal in its race to get rid of protections against discrimination for transgender people that had been put in place under President Barack Obama. On Friday, as The New York Times reported, the Department of Health and Human services unveiled a new set of regulations that, if allowed to be put into effect, will eliminate the Obama-era safeguard that prevented health care providers from discriminating on the basis of gender identity.
Under Obama, existing rules barring health care discrimination “on the basis of sex” were expanded to include transgender identity under the definition of “sex.” The new, Trump-proposed rule would narrow the definition to exclude gender identity, allowing doctors and nurses to refuse certain types of care to people who identify as transgender.
The Trump rollback would also apply to health insurance companies, which would no longer be required to cover procedures for transgender patients.
The Obama-era rule was adopted as part of the Affordable Care Act (better known as “Obamacare”) which included the provision prohibiting sex discrimination, broadly defining “sex” to include an individual’s “internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female, and which may be different from an individual’s sex assigned at birth.”
As part of the HHS rule revamp, a “conscience” rule has been fortified which allows health care providers—including not only doctors but nurses, pharmacists, and non-medical staff members such as emergency room receptionists—to refuse to take part in abortion services even in cases where the life of the mother is directly threatened by a pregnancy, such as in a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.
But under the Trump definition of “conscience,” health care personnel may also refuse care to transgender people, according to a BuzzFeed report on the new rules.
And on Wednesday, the Trump administration proposed another new rule that would allow homeless shelters to simply turn away transgender homeless people, or to house them with people of their birth gender, rather than the gender with which they identify, or with other trans people.
The rules would apply to any health care facility or homeless shelter that receives government funding.
Trump administration officials claimed that the new rules would not lead to increased discrimination, because transgender Americans are protected by other existing laws.
The new rule rollback proposed Friday does not take effect for at least 60 days—and likely even longer, since legal challenges to the rule are also likely to be filed in courts, possibly delaying implementation of the rollback even further.
Photo By The White House / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
