Biden administration announces new regulations on gender identity policies – Detroit Catholic

WASHINGTON (OSV News) The Department of Health and Human Services announced new regulations on April 26 that reinstate Obama-era protections for patients who identify as transgender that the Trump administration revoked in 2020. The new rule follows a another controversial rule that adds gender identity to Title IX protections.

The HHS regulations, to be released May 6, seek to expand patients’ civil rights protections by prohibiting federally funded health care providers and insurers from discriminating against patients seeking treatment related to their identity of gender or sexual orientation.

HHS spokespeople argued that the expansion would protect LGBTQ+ patients while respecting federal protections for religious freedom and conscience.

“Today’s rule is a big step forward for this country toward a more equitable and inclusive health care system, and it means Americans across the country now have a clear way to act on their rights against discrimination when they go to the doctor, talk to their health plans, or participate with health programs run by HHS,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “I’m so proud that our Office for Civil Rights is standing up against discrimination, no matter who you are, who you love, your faith, or where you live. Once again, we’re reminding Americans that we have your back.”

But Julie Marie Blake, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a statement that the regulation “is a huge reach that turns medicine upside down.”

“Congress never voted to redefine sex in the Affordable Care Act to add gender identity. The rule harms families and children by promoting dangerous and life-altering ‘gender transition’ procedures that remove parts body or block puberty,” Blake said. “Biden administration’s blatant rule would alter America’s medical system for the worst.”

Doug Wilson, CEO of the Catholic Benefits Association, said in a statement: “In the last 10 days, the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) and HHS have issued three new mandates that demonstrate their determination to govern by regulatory law.”

“This government overreach hijacks the legislative process and enforces an ideologically driven agenda,” Wilson said, adding that his group is “engaged in a deep evaluation of each of these onerous mandates and will present our analysis and strategy legal in the coming days”.

In an April 30 statement, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Religious Liberty, said: “The human right to health care derives from the sanctity of people, the life and dignity that belongs to all human persons, made in the image of God”.

“The same core beliefs about human dignity and the design of God’s wisdom that motivate Catholics to care for the sick also shape our convictions about the care of premature infants and the unchanging nature of the human person,” he said. “These commitments are inseparable.”

Bishop Rhoades added that while the USCCB appreciates “that the final rule does not seek to impose a mandate regarding abortion,” the rule “nevertheless advances an ideological view of sex that, as noted the Holy See, denies the most beautiful and powerful difference that exists between living beings: the sexual difference”.

“I pray that health care workers will accept the truth about the human person, a truth reflected in Catholic teaching, and that HHS will not substitute their judgment for theirs,” he said.

In early April, the Department of Education also released its finalized regulations under Title IX, the federal civil rights law of 1972 that requires women and girls to have equal access and treatment in the ‘education and athletics. Department spokesmen argued that the new regulations, which take effect Aug. 1, expand the rules governing educational institutions that receive federal funding to ensure that no person experiences sex discrimination, based on sexual stereotypes, orientation sexual, gender identity and sexual characteristics. sexual harassment or sexual violence in these institutions.

“For more than 50 years, Title IX has promised equal opportunity to learn and thrive in our nation’s schools free of sex discrimination,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “These final regulations build on the legacy of Title IX by making clear that all students in our nation can access schools that are safe, welcoming and respect their rights.”

Some attorneys general, including Mississippi’s Lynn Fitch, filed a lawsuit challenging the new regulation. They said in an April 29 news release that expanding the law’s reach could dilute its purpose of protecting women’s athletics.

“Title IX has been a game changer for generations of women,” Fitch said in a statement. “For more than fifty years, it has given girls the opportunity to compete on a level playing field and offered them a fair chance to excel. The Biden administration’s pursuit of an extremist political agenda here will destroy those important gains. What’s more, under these new rules, safe and private spaces for women to engage in healing, companionship and support will be ripped away from them. The Administration’s legal theories are new, at best. and cut legal corners to push them, and we intend to defeat this rule in court.”

Franciscan Father Dave Pivonka, president of Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, wrote about the new regulation in a letter to students, faculty and staff, making clear that the school believes “in the inherent dignity of every human person.”

“And as a passionately Catholic institution, we believe in and follow the teachings of the Catholic Church which hold that ‘sex’ refers to the objective reality of a human person as either male (male) or female (female), grounded in and determined by a person’s biology,” Fr Pivonka said.

The university chancellor emphasized what he called the need to “differentiate between behaviors that our current cultural norms may judge as discriminatory or harassing (for example, explaining Catholic teaching on sexuality) and behaviors that, in fact, , attack a person’s dignity (for example, any act of harassment or violence).”

“Violations of a person’s dignity will not be tolerated on this campus,” he wrote. “Presenting authentic Catholic teachings, which convey truth, beauty, freedom and healing, elevates the human person in all aspects. Teaching what the Church teaches is an act of charity and our duty as a Catholic university.”

Fr. Pivonka added that “the Title IX statute itself and the Title IX regulations state that Title IX does not apply to a religious educational institution to the extent that the requirements of Title IX are inconsistent with the religious principles of the organization “.

“Therefore, whatever effect the new Title IX regulations may have on public institutions or secular institutions, the University will not apply the regulations in any way that is inconsistent with the Catholic Church’s teaching on ‘ sex’ as defined in ‘Male and Female who created Them: Compendium of Human Sexuality at Franciscan University of Steubenville,'” he said, meaning the university will continue to operate “housing, restrooms, locker rooms and athletic teams competitive” for a single sex.

In guidelines on health care policy and practice published in 2023, the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed interventions that “involve the use of surgical or chemical techniques that aim exchange the sexual characteristics of one patient’s body for those of the opposite sex or for simulations of the same.”

“Any technological intervention that does not conform to the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but rather harms the human person “, the document states. .