The Biden administration reversed a Trump-era policy which allowed healthcare providers to discriminate against LGBTQ people, if they claimed a religious exemption. The move also reinstates Obamacare guidance and expands policy to include sexual orientation and gender identity in sex discrimination.
The change is effective immediately, and officials at the Department of Health and Human Services framed the change as an update to the existing interpretation of the law following Bostock v. Clayton County; it was a landmark decision upheld last year by the Supreme Court which found LGBTQ people are protected by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, banning discrimination on the basis of sex.
“Fear of discrimination can lead individuals to forego care, which can have serious negative health consequences,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “It is the position of the Department of Health and Human Services that everyone—including LGBTQ people—should be able to access healthcare, free from discrimination or interference, period.”
The Trump administration had defined “sex” to mean gender assigned at birth, excluding trans people from the umbrella of legal protection, though a judge later blocked these orders from moving forward.
This is just one Trump-era policy among many the Biden administration is working to combat. At the time of writing, GLAAD’s Biden Accountability Tracker shows that the administration has made 39 pro-LGBTQ moves in the first 110 days of the presidency.
In the wake of hundreds of anti-LGBTQ, many specifically anti-trans, bills across the U.S., Biden voiced his support for trans youth at a joint session of Congress, and there are reports the administration may be working with HRC on combatting these bills on a federal level.
The Biden administration has also lifted a travel ban to several Muslim-majority countries, stopped an effort to withdraw from the World Health Organization, and rejoined the Paris Agreement.
