The Biden administration is backing down from trying to force Catholic health care providers to enter the gender transition business.
The Justice Department this week let the deadline pass to file an appeal before the Supreme Court in Sisters of Mercy v. Becerra, marking the second time the administration has declined to defend the Affordable Care Act’s “transgender mandate.”
The practical effect of the decision: Catholic medical professionals and organizations in the church’s extensive U.S. health care network will not be required to perform gender transition surgeries or provide medical insurance coverage for their employees to undergo such procedures.
Becket Law, which represented a coalition of Catholic hospitals, nuns and a Catholic university, cheered the department’s decision to drop the legal battle after the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a temporary block on the mandate in December.
“After multiple defeats in court, the federal government has thrown in the towel on its controversial, medically unsupported transgender mandate,” said Luke Goodrich, Becket vice president and senior counsel. “Doctors take a solemn oath to ‘do no harm,’ and they can’t keep that oath if the federal government is forcing them to perform harmful, irreversible procedures against their conscience and medical expertise.”
The Sisters of Mercy coalition sued in 2016 after “the federal government reinterpreted the Affordable Care Act to require doctors and hospitals across the country to perform controversial gender-transition procedures, including on children, even when doing so would violate doctors’ consciences,” Becket said.
This was the second legal win in less than a year for Catholic health care providers who objected to the mandate.
In August, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s permanent injunction on behalf of the Franciscan Alliance, a Catholic health care network with nearly 19,000 providers. The Biden administration declined to bring an appeal before the Supreme Court.
“These religious doctors and hospitals provide vital care to patients in need, including millions of dollars in free and low-cost care to the elderly, poor, and underserved,” said Mr. Goodrich. “This is a win for patients, conscience and common sense.”
Congratulations @BECKETlaw on another important win.
— Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanTAnd) June 21, 2023
Federal government backs down on transgender mandate. https://t.co/wrgHkveqB5
The Justice Department did not comment publicly on the decision, but the department filed “statements of interest” against laws in Arkansas and Kentucky that barred medical providers from giving gender transition drugs or offering such surgeries to minors. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has been sympathetic to religious freedom arguments in similar cases.
‘Critical protections’
Supporters of the mandate say patients should not lose their rights to legal medical procedures because of the faith beliefs of the hospital or doctor’s practice where they are treated. The American Civil Liberties Union said last year that the Franciscan Alliance lawsuit would “undermine critical protections against discrimination in health care.”
“No one — whether they’re male or female, transgender or not — should fear being turned away at the hospital door because of who they are,” said Louise Melling, ACLU deputy legal director. “Religious liberty does not mean the right to discriminate or harm others.”
Transgender rights supporters claimed a legal victory this week when a federal judge in Little Rock struck down Arkansas’ new law barring transgender treatments for children and teenagers. The judge ruled that the statute discriminated against transgender patients and violated the constitutional rights of doctors who agreed to perform the practices. It was one of the first legal tests of a statute proposed by lawmakers in several conservative states. An appeal of the ruling is expected.
Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President Brent Leatherwood hailed the Biden administration’s decision not to appeal the transgender mandate as a “significant victory in safeguarding the rights of medical professionals to operate in a manner consistent with their deepest held beliefs.”
“This is an important development we should take note of because it not only represents a win for conscience rights but also furthers efforts to shield vulnerable individuals who should never become pawns in the sexual revolution,” he said in a statement.
The deadline to bring an appeal before the Supreme Court was Tuesday.
U.S. Catholic bishops voted late last week to rewrite their official guidance to Catholic health care institutions on transgender surgeries and hormone treatments. The move was widely seen as a prelude to establishing a clear bar on such treatments for transgender people at Catholic hospitals and church-affiliated medical centers.
In March, the bishops approved a “doctrinal note” holding that Catholic health care services “must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex or take part in the development of such procedures.”
The U.S. has more than 600 Catholic-affiliated hospitals and more than 1,600 long-term care and other health care facilities. The church’s health ministry is the largest single group of nonprofit health care providers in the country, according to the Catholic Health Association of the United States. An estimated 1 in 7 patients hospitalized in the U.S. daily is treated in a Catholic hospital.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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