Biden Administration Proposal Would Strengthen Trans Healthcare Protections

The effects of the Trump era ripple into our present day in ideology and policy, though a new proposal from the Biden administration would work to mend LGBTQ healthcare restrictions from the previous administration. The proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would reverse Trump-era limits on healthcare protections against LGBTQ people.

Specifically, the proposal would update Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare. The new rules would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, including the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, in certain health programs and activities, in line with the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision that federal laws against workplace discrimination on the basis of sex also protect LGBTQ folks.

The proposal would also protect people seeking reproductive services, including those who have had abortions, from discrimination.

The Obama administration interpreted Section 1557’s protections to prohibit hospitals, insurers, and other healthcare providers from discriminating against trans people, gender-nonconforming people, and people who have had abortions in the past. In 2016, a federal judge blocked the expanded protections. Then in 2020, the Trump administration ruled to remove most of the protections that formerly prevented healthcare workers from denying care to patients on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.

Specifically, the rule defined “discrimination on the basis of sex” as “sex discrimination according to the plain meaning of the word ‘sex’ as male or female and as determined by biology,” essentially allowing healthcare entities an easier out to claim that treating trans and gender-nonconforming folks violates their religious beliefs.

During a media briefing, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra asserts, “We want to make sure that whoever you are, whatever you look like, wherever you live, however you wish to live your life, that you have access to the care that you need.”

Becerra adds that the department knows the transgender community feels left out in many states.

“This I hope will send a signal that if you are seeking healthcare, and you have a right to access that care, we will protect that right against discrimination,” Becerra says.

The Biden administration rule will likely take effect in 2023, Bacerra says.