The Biden administration was barred on Monday from forcing nonprofit and for-profit Christian healthcare providers to pay for purported “gender transition” surgeries and hormones.
Christian Employers Alliance, represented by attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom, had asked the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota to stop the Biden administration from enforcing two rules that prevent Christian companies from discriminating over the “gender identity” of patients and employees. Judges ruled that the religious beliefs held by the Christian Employers Alliance “are substantially burdened by the monetary penalties” they face under the rules for refusing to violate biblical doctrine on sexual ethics.
“We are overjoyed our members will not have to choose between the biblically based employee benefits and quality healthcare they provide, and the threat of federal enforcement,” Christian Employers Alliance President Shannon Royce said in a press release about the decision.
The first rule was issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and states that employers must pay for health insurance for procedures purporting to change the body in order to align with the “gender identity” of an individual. The other was issued by the Department of Health and Human Services and interprets the category of “sex” in federal law as applying to “gender identity,” thereby applying civil rights statutes to the issue of transgenderism.
“All employers and healthcare providers, including those in the Christian Employers Alliance, have the constitutionally protected freedom to conduct their business and render treatment in a manner consistent with their deeply held religious beliefs,” Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Matt Bowman commented. “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 sex.”
At least twenty-three states have now passed prohibitions on transgender surgeries and hormone procedures for minors, which have been criticized for the irreversible physical harm they render and the biological impossibility of changing individual sex. At least twenty states have likewise approved a blanket ban on males from participating in female sports leagues.
