The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights released a proposed rule that will allow discrimination in healthcare. The change is aimed at the transgender community and women who have had abortions.

The proposal aims to revise Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. The regulation, if finalized, would remove all references to gender identity, sex stereotyping and termination of pregnancy in the regulation and would broadly increase the authority of health care providers to refuse service based on religious objection.
Williams Institute Executive Director Jocelyn Samuels, the former Director of OCR, said, “The Trump administration is proposing a harmful rollback of protections from discrimination in healthcare and insurance coverage that is inconsistent with the weight of the law and will limit health care access for vulnerable Americans. If the administration is successful, LGBT people would be at particular risk. But the civil rights of all Americans would be eroded. Our government should be working to expand access to health care and improve people’s well-being.”

National Center for Transgender Equality Executive Director Mara Keisling said, “They came for transgender students. They came for transgender troops. Now, the Trump administration is coming for transgender people’s health care. … No one should be turned away by a doctor because of who they are or forced to live in fear of seeing a doctor when they need it most.”

“Yet again, the Trump Administration strives to harm LGBT people; this time by rolling back crucial health care protections for LGBT people and other vulnerable persons,” Lambda Legal Litigation Director Diana Flynn said in a statement. “By repealing a regulation clarifying that LGBT people are protected against health care discrimination under the Affordable Care Act’s nondiscrimination provisions, the Trump Administration seeks to deny life-saving health care to LGBT people and others and replaces these critical protections with a narrow definition of sex, not grounded in science or the law.”

“This morning, without justification or cause — and apparently without any concern for the consequences — the Trump administration moved to undermine protections that allow people to seek and receive health care free from discrimination and judgment,” said Debra L. Ness, president of National Partnership for Women & Families.

“The proposed regulation is one of several moves by this administration to redefine sex discrimination across federal law, including positions in litigation and a leaked memo that described an attempt to excise transgender people broadly from federal legal protections,” ACLU spokeswoman Mia Jacobs said. “Earlier this week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a rollback of nondiscrimination protections at federally funded shelters for transgender people experiencing homelessness.”

— David Taffet