AUSTIN, Texas (Legal Newsline) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Jan. 1 that a federal court has granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Obama administration’s new federal health rules that force doctors to act contrary to their medical judgment or religious beliefs.
The law would have mandated that the Employees Retirement System of Texas change its insurance coverage principles for all 500,000 participants to provide for gender reassignment surgeries and abortion.
According to Paxton, Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act under the idea that “sex” is a biological category, but the Obama administration has since changed that idea to be a category of the mind. The administration allegedly allowed “sex” to mean one’s “internal sense of gender which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female,” Paxton said.
The new rule would purportedly force taxpayers to fund all treatments related to sex reassignment, and would also force health care workers to provide abortion services.
“This striking example of federal overreach under Obamacare would force many doctors, hospitals and other health care providers in Texas to participate in sex-reassignment surgeries and treatments, even if it violates their best medical judgment or their religious beliefs,” Paxton said. “I will always fight to protect the constitutional rights of Texans.”