New Year's Eve Injunction Against Govt Redefinition of "Sex" Could Have Broader Use

This ruling could have even further reaching implications than just health law.

For the past few years, President Obama, his Department of (social) Justice, and liberal reprobates across the nation have waged a war on religious freedoms – and biology.

Advertisement

In the deeply sickened minds of liberals, if a 40-year old black man declares that he is a 4-year old, lesbian white girl, then that’s what he is, no matter what the constraints of time, DNA, pigmentation, and commonsense tell us.

And if you say otherwise, then you’re obviously some kind of bigoted hatemonger.

For those of us who still think reality matters, we’ve become stuck in a loop of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and no amount of pointing out the nakedness of the immoral left will convince them that you’re not the ones with the problem.

Our Dan Spencer wrote about a recent decision handed down by a federal judge in Texas on New Year’s Eve, which placed an injunction on President Obama’s so-called “transgender mandate.”

Left unchecked, January 1, 2017 would have seen provisions made law that would require medical professionals to disregard their religious convictions, as well as professional judgment, as they were forced to perform procedures on individuals – even children – to cater to their transgender delusions.

The Becket Fund is the organization which sued, on behalf of religious healthcare providers, to stop what they saw as the administration’s attack against religious freedom and just sound medical practice.

The state plaintiffs in the case, who had sued alongside the providers, argued (among other things) that their state laws requiring doctors to act on their best medical judgment would be overturned by this new federal rule. They also argued that the rule would require them to provide state employees with insurance plans that cover sex reassignment procedures.

Advertisement

The Obama administration, of course, insists that the law would simply assure that no transgendered person would be denied health services.

The goal here is to make you believe that if a guy in a dress comes into the hospital with a broken leg, after falling off of a pair of heels he shouldn’t have been wearing, then the hospital could claim their religious affiliation as a reason not to treat his broken leg.

That’s not the case. AT ALL.

But as often happens in these cases, the popular representation is not always the same as the case presented in court. The rule, as the Department of Health and Human Services acknowledged in its own 66-page response to the complaint, would have subjected denials of gender reassignment treatment or coverage to administrative and court challenges, in which those making the decisions would have had to justify their medical decisions in such cases as non-discriminatory.

In other words, if some twisted “parent” wants to haul her 8-year old daughter into a doctor to begin hormone therapy to make her daughter more masculine, so she could join the Boy Scouts, and a sane doctor said it was not only unhealthy for the child, but against his religious convictions, the “parent” could sue, and the doctor would have to prove in court that it wasn’t discrimination, but common sense medical advice, paired with his faith that led him to refuse this service.

Liberals have a way of forging every day, rational things into weapons of mass confusion, and the victim card is always at hand.

Advertisement

From the Becket Fund’s complaint, as filed:

HHS attempts to impose these dramatic new requirements by redefining a single word used in the Affordable Care Act: “sex.” For decades, across multiple federal statutes, Congress has consistently used the term “sex” to refer to an individual’s status as male or female, as determined by a person’s biological sex at birth. But in the Regulation, HHS redefines “sex” to include “an individual’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female, and which may be different from an individual’s sex assigned at birth.” 45 C.F.R. § 92.4. Thus, with a single stroke of the pen, HHS has created a massive new liability for thousands of healthcare professionals unless they cast aside their medical judgment and perform controversial and even harmful medical transition procedures. And HHS has done this despite the fact that Congress has repeatedly rejected similar attempts to redefine “sex” through legislation, and federal courts have repeatedly rejected attempts to accomplish the same goal through litigation. The Regulation not only forces healthcare professionals to violate their medical judgment, it also forces them to violate their deeply held religious beliefs.

Basically, for years the government has used the term “sex” to refer to biological gender, with no problem, but Obama’s new health laws are an attempt to shoehorn social justice fantasy into the Title IX sex discrimination definition.

Advertisement

Pointing out that even recently, Congress has used the terms “sex” and “gender identity” as separate things (Hint: One is biology, and the other is a mental issue), the judge in issuing this injunction said:

Prior to the passage of the ACA in 2010 and for more than forty years after the passage of Title IX in 1972, no federal court or agency had concluded sex should be defined to include gender identity. Accordingly, HHS’s expanded definition of sex discrimination exceeds the grounds incorporated by Section 1557 [of Obamacare].

That sound you hear is BOOM.

So what further implications could this have?

Well, how about a quelling of arguments over transgender bathroom access?

In March of 2016 the bathroom issue took off, when (former) North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed a commonsense bathroom bill, HB2, into law, in an effort to stop individual cities around the state from unilaterally enacting damaging, ill-advised social justice bathroom policies on public businesses.

McCrory was labeled a bigot and liberals from out of state flooded his opponent’s campaign with funds to drive McCrory from office.

They didn’t mention that the Charlotte City Ordinance that started the whole maelstrom was so broadly worded that any man could declare he “felt” like a woman and could have strolled into any bathroom or locker room.

They also didn’t mention that the ordinance called for a $500 penalty and even jail time for any business owner that refused to allow anything-goes in their bathrooms.

Advertisement

The ordinance, and its proponents, such as the new governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, would like to erase the lines separating biology and feelings, as well as the religious freedoms of public businesses, to force this bathroom issue as one of “discrimination.”

If this New Year’s Eve injunction has successfully prevented the government from arbitrarily redefining the term, “sex,” then would it seem likely that this is another arrow in the quiver for those who are fighting to keep public bathrooms and locker rooms as safe and segregated by biological certainty?

Let’s hope so.

 

 

Recommended

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on RedState Videos