A Biden administration mandate requiring healthcare providers and religious employers to provide transgender surgeries, counseling and procedures against their religious beliefs has temporarily been blocked by a federal judge.
District Judge Daniel Traynor granted the Christian Employers Alliance’s request for a preliminary injunction in the Monday court order, enjoining the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Health and Human Services from interpreting or enforcing the law “in a manner that would require its present or future members to provide insurance coverage for gender transition services.”
“No government agency ought to be in the business of evaluating the sincerity of another’s religious beliefs,” the court order said. “HHS guidance encourages a parent to file a complaint if a medical provider refuses to gender transition their child, of any age, including an infant. The thought that a newborn child could be surgically altered to change gender is the result of the Biden HHS Notification and HHS Guidance that brands a medical professional’s refusal to do so as discrimination.”
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In a lawsuit filed on behalf of the organization, the Alliance Defending Freedom’s attorneys had requested the court grant the preliminary injunction.
“All employers and health-care providers, including those in the Christian Employers Alliance, have the constitutional right to conduct their business and render treatment in a manner consistent with their deeply held religious beliefs,” Legal Counsel Jacob Reed said in a statement. “The employers we represent believe that God purposefully created humans as either male or female, and so it would violate their religious beliefs to pay for or perform life-altering medical procedures or surgeries that seek to change one’s biological sex.”
Alliance President Shannon Royce said in a statement that the Biden administration’s mandates are “crippling for the countless Christian owned and operated businesses seeking to care well for their employees without the fear of punishing fines, burdensome litigation costs, the loss of federal funds and even criminal penalties.
“As stewards of the health and safety of our valued employees, it is unconscionable and unconstitutional to be mandated to provide, pay for or promote services and procedures that directly contradict our deeply held religious beliefs. We are pleased that we can continue to act consistent with those beliefs while our lawsuit proceeds and look forward to ultimately prevailing with our case.”
