WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Following the release of the final rule on federal regulations governing health care and gender identity, the Catholic Benefits Association has amended its ongoing lawsuit against the Biden Administration challenging the policy.
The association first filed suit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in federal district court in North Dakota in October 2023. The amended lawsuit seeks relief from new regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services in early May that expand civil rights protections for patients by prohibiting health care providers and insurers that receive federal funding from discriminating against patients who seek treatment related to gender identity or sexual orientation.
“That’s the reason for our complaint. The new rules state that TPAs (third-party administrators) and insurers must cover not only gender transition services but also what we now call ‘gender affirming care,'” CBA general counsel Martin Nussbaum told OSV News.
CBAs are made up of Catholic parishes, hospitals, school systems, religious organizations and other entities that provide insurance and benefit programs to their employees that follow Catholic teachings.
On April 26, HHS announced it would reinstate Obama-era regulations governing medical care for patients who identify as transgender that the Trump administration had rescinded in 2020, but a court blocked the move. On May 6, HHS issued a final rule on the regulations, which are scheduled to go into effect on July 5.
Critics say the restrictions could effectively force Catholic health care providers to provide treatments that go against the church’s teachings outlined in the U.S. bishops’ Ethical and Religious Guidelines for Catholic Health Services.
In its complaint, the CBA said requiring its members to cover “gender-reassignment services, abortion, IVF, surrogacy and fertility treatments, including gamete donation, would be contrary to our Catholic values, would bring scandal to our employees and supporters, and would undermine our religious mission.”
“HHS and EEOC have moved forward without providing any explicit religious exemption,” Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, chairman of the CBA board, said in a statement.
“They know that these orders are contrary to Catholic values,” Archbishop Lori said. “Respecting faith-based conscientious objectors has long been practiced in the United States. It is shameful that HHS has failed to follow this practice. Catholic employers now find themselves in an intolerable situation.”
When the rule was announced in April, an HHS spokesperson argued that the expansion would protect LGBTQ+ patients while also respecting federal protections for religious freedom and conscience.
In a guideline on health care policy and practice issued in 2023, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Doctrine Committee opposed interventions that “involve the use of surgical or chemical procedures aimed at exchanging the patient’s bodily gender characteristics with those of the opposite sex or mimicking the opposite sex.”
“Any technological intervention that is not in keeping with the fundamental order of the human being as a unity of body and soul, including the inscription of gender differences in the body, will ultimately harm rather than help the human being,” the document states.
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