Attorney General Ashley Moody filed suit against Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services over the administration’s attempt to force Florida to violate its own law and fund drugs and surgeries for “gender transition” for children. Moody stated, “Florida passed a law to protect our children from dangerous, irreversible gender-transition drugs and surgeries. Now, Biden and his federal bureaucrats are trying to go around our child-protection law to force the state to pay for puberty blockers and gender-transition surgery for children. These rules trample states’ power to protect their own citizens and we will not stand by as Biden tries, yet again, to use the force of the federal government to unlawfully stifle Florida’s effort to protect children.”
The administration is attempting to cite Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act “which forbids covered entities, including States, from discriminating in health programs or activities ‘on the ground prohibited under…title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972’”. However, according to the complaint, “the 2024 Rules go far beyond what Section 1557 and Title IX require. The 2024 Rules attempt to require Florida to fund drugs and surgeries for “gender-transition”; unlawfully limit States’ power to set protective standards of care for health care professionals; compel states to cover these gender-transition interventions in state-administered health care programs and employee insurance plans; and prevent States from protecting vulnerable residents—including children—from dangerous medical interventions that could render them infertile for life.”
Florida, and the more than 20 additional states who prohibit hormone treatment and surgery for minors, however, are not alone in their thinking. According to the complaint, in 2016, then-President Obama’s HHS concluded not requiring national coverage of gender-reassignment surgeries due to a lack of evidence that this surgery improves health outcomes. In 2020, then-President Trump’s HHS concluded, similarly, that there was not quality evidence supporting gender-change treatments.
Attorney General Moody is joined in the lawsuit by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, the Florida Department of Management Services, and the Catholic Medical Association.