In a move widely decried by LGBTQ, reproductive, and human rights advocates, the Trump administration late Friday finalized a health care rule that revokes Obama-era nondiscrimination protections for transgender and nonbinary people, patients seeking abortions, and those who do not speak English.
“This is deadly and all of us should be outraged,” declared ACLU deputy legal director Louise Melling. “This is beyond heartless.”
“While people are facing alarming rates of unemployment, a loss of health insurance, and a global pandemic, the Trump administration has rolled back rules meant to ensure people are not turned away from healthcare because of who they are or what language they speak,” she said.
“The Trump administration,” Melling added, “has made a mission out of putting politicians and religious beliefs above a patient’s healthcare.”
Fatima Goss Graves of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) said in a statement that the administration “should be ashamed of itself for finalizing a rule that puts the lives of the most marginalized in danger during a global pandemic” and warned patients will be “put at risk by this rule.”
this will kill trans people
this will kill trans people
this will kill trans people
this will kill trans people
this will kill trans people
this will kill trans people
this will kill trans people https://t.co/tEeEUeGW4T— Evan Greer is on Mastodon and Bluesky (@evan_greer) June 12, 2020
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, also issued a warning Friday, saying that “the new rules released today are hateful and cruel, and will keep people from being able to get the care they need to live happy, healthy, and productive lives.”
“Even as the death toll and catastrophe of the Covid-19 pandemic grows and people take to the streets, the Trump administration remains focused on denying equal access to healthcare to transgender people,” Keisling said. “The Trump administration has waged a non-stop campaign against transgender people, taking every opportunity to deny us the ability to live our lives as who we are.”
Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association, also weighed in, the Associated Press reported. Bailey said that “the federal government should never make it more difficult for individuals to access healthcare—during a pandemic or any other time.”
The Trump admin has issued a rule that will embolden health care discrimination against transgender people, those seeking reproductive health care, and many other individuals who need health care — all while a global pandemic is occurring.
— ACLU (@ACLU) June 12, 2020
The rule, announced in a statement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), focuses on Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, which prohibits discrimination against patients in line with federal civil rights statutes. Those statutes include Title IX, which outlaws discrimination on the basis of sex.
“In 2016, the [Obama] administration issued a regulation implementing Section 1557 (the 2016 rule) that redefined sex discrimination to include termination of pregnancy and gender identity, which it defined as ‘one’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female,” HHS said Friday.
“HHS will enforce Section 1557 by returning to the government’s interpretation of sex discrimination according to the plain meaning of the word ‘sex’ as male or female and as determined by biology,” the department said. “The 2016 rule declined to recognize sexual orientation as a protected category under the ACA, and HHS will leave that judgment undisturbed.”
This is what it feels like even for many of us who are the most privileged. The Trump administration is claiming health care discrimination is "unlikely" to happen to trans people. They know that is a lie. https://t.co/tX7rk4gRFW
— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) June 12, 2020
According to the AP:
The new rule would also affect the notices that millions of patients get in multiple languages about their rights to translation services. Such notices often come with insurer ‘explanation of benefits’ forms.
“This sanctioning of discrimination in healthcare is unlawful and immoral, and doing so while our country loses thousands of lives daily and health inequities across the board persist is especially egregious,” Goss Graves said.
“No one should fear being turned away by a medical provider because of who they are or the personal health decisions they have made,” she added. “This is beyond unacceptable, and we are prepared to take whatever action is necessary to ensure patients come first.”
The NWLC has teamed up with the Transgender Law Center, Harvard Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund to challenge the rule. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) announced in a statement Friday that it also intends to file to a lawsuit.
https://twitter.com/shiramstein/status/1271554437786546178
“We cannot and will not allow Donald Trump to continue attacking us,” said HRC president Alphonso David. “LGBTQ people get sick. LGBTQ people need healthcare. LGBTQ people should not live in fear that they cannot get the care they need simply because of who they are.”
“It is clear that this administration does not believe that LGBTQ people, or other marginalized communities, deserve equality under the law,” he added. “But we have a reality check for them: we will not let this attack on our basic right to be free from discrimination in healthcare go unchallenged.”
As David put it: “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.”
Neither a global pandemic, nor national uprisings over racist violence, nor Pride month will stop the Trump administration from doing everything in its power to discriminate, divide, and reduce access to health care. https://t.co/oxe9GIyFAk
— Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) June 12, 2020
The HHS announcement came not only during LGBTQ Pride Month but also—as David and other critics noted—on the fourth anniversary of a mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando in which 49 people were killed and dozens more were injured, the deadliest attack on the LGBTQ community in American history.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 300 new monthly donors in the next 4 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy