The US Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) under the Trump administration is moving to strip protections from transgender Americans established under Obamacare. The HHS is now recognising sex discrimination as “according to the plain meaning of the word sex as male or female and as determined by biology.”
This means that all federally funded healthcare providers and insurance companies are able to refuse services to the transgender community, regardless of whether the client is seeking a regular check-up, transition-related care, or even treatment for cancer.
On the fourth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub massacre and in the middle of Pride Month, the Trump Administration is working to erase the civil rights of the transgender community from healthcare legislation.
Established in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) defined gender as “a person’s internal sense of being male, female, neither or a combination.” By reverting back to the Trump administration’s definition of gender, the HHS have completed erased all non-cis-gendered Americans from relevant gender discrimination legislation.
Whilst favoured amongst the country’s more conservative crowd, the Human Rights Campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union have both announced legal action against the administration.
“We cannot and will not allow Donald Trump to continue attacking us,” The Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David told CNN.
“Today, the Human Rights Campaign is announcing plans to sue the Trump administration for exceeding their legal authority and attempting to remove basic health care protections from vulnerable communities including LGBTQ people.”
