Trump Administration Erases Transgender Civil Rights Protections in Health Care - The New York Times

Trump Administration Erases Transgender Civil Rights Protections in Health Care

Transgender rights advocates criticized the timing for another reason: the coronavirus.

“It’s really, really horrendous to not only gut nondiscrimination protections, but to gut nondiscrimination protections in the middle of a pandemic,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the deputy executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “This rule opens a door for a medical provider to turn someone away for a Covid-19 test just because they happen to be transgender.”

The announcement also prompted an outcry from the Human Rights Campaign, a prominent lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer advocacy group, which said it plans to sue the Trump administration.

“We will not let this attack on our basic right to be free from discrimination in health care go unchallenged. We will see them in court, and continue to challenge all of our elected officials to rise up against this blatant attempt to erode critical protections people need and sanction discrimination,” the organization said in a statement.

Mr. Severino, who spent seven years in civil-rights enforcement at the Justice Department and once oversaw the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation, said that the Trump administration would defend the decision in court.

Mr. Severino has extensive experience litigating religious liberty cases. His current office is responsible for investigating discriminatory violations in health care.

Katie M. Keith, who teaches health law at Georgetown University and has closely tracked this area of civil rights law, said the rule finalized Friday needed to be seen as part of a broad pattern of regulatory changes that eliminate civil rights protections for transgender people and establishes a definition of sex as being biologically obvious at birth. That idea “is what they are pushing forward on all of these different policy angles across different agencies,” she said.

Rolling back the health care rule has been a cause for social conservatives since its implementation, including Mr. Severino, who criticized it while at the Heritage Foundation. They have accused the Obama administration of coercing doctors into sexual reassignment operations, procedures that are typically handled by specialists. Another rule issued by Mr. Severino’s office last year would provide additional “conscience” protections for health care workers with religious or moral objections to certain types of care. That rule has been voided by several federal courts.

Thanks for visiting our article Trump Administration Erases Transgender Civil Rights Protections in Health Care - The New York Times. Please share it with kind.

Sincery One Health Club

SRC: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/us/politics/trump-transgender-rights.html

powered by Blogger News Poster

Tweet