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Following a class action lawsuit filed by the America First Legal (AFL), a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled that Biden’s order forcing doctors to treat patients based on “gender identity” and not based on science is unlawful.
“HISTORIC VICTORY FOR SCIENCE,” AFL wrote on its Twitter account. “Federal court ruled that Biden’s edict forcing doctors to treat patients based on “gender identity” (i.e. providing “puberty blockers”, hormones, referrals to genital mutilation surgery) is unlawful, following AFL class action lawsuit.”
Stephen Miller, President of America First Legal, also announced the great news on his Twitter account.
“Huge litigation win for America First Legal. Federal judge just ruled that Biden’s edict forcing doctors to treat patients based on “gender identity” and not scientific reality (eg chemical castration) is unlawful.”
“Historic victory against gender lunacy and child abuse,” he continued.
Reuters reported:
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo ruled that a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2020 holding that a law barring workplace discrimination protects gay and transgender employees did not apply to the healthcare law.
The ruling by Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, came in a class action lawsuit by two doctors represented by the America First Legal Foundation, set up by former Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller.
They sued after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in May 2021 it would interpret Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which bars healthcare providers from discriminating on the basis of sex, as extending to sexual orientation and gender identity.
Kacsmaryk said Congress, when adopting the law, known as Obamacare, in 2010, during the tenure of former Democratic President Barack Obama, could have included “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” in the text, but “chose not to do so.”
Instead, the law incorporated the bar against discrimination “on the basis of sex” in Title IX, a 50-year-old federal civil rights law that bars such discrimination in education programs.
Kacsmaryk said the logic of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conclusion that Title VII’s bar against sex discrimination covered gay and transgender workers did not lead to the same result under Title IX’s text.
“Title IX’s ordinary public meaning remains intact until changed by Congress, or perhaps the Supreme Court,” Kacsmaryk wrote.