Indiana joins lawsuit challenging protections for transgender care

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Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has joined legal chiefs from 14 other states in filing a lawsuit that challenges a new rule from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that aims to protect gay and transgender people from health-care discrimination.

Conservative opponents of the rule have argued the policy could force doctors to perform gender-transition surgeries and other procedures that they oppose on religious grounds.

“The Biden administration will stop at nothing to impose its radical transgender ideology on Hoosiers and all Americans,” Rokita said in a news release. “These HHS bureaucrats are illegally weaponizing the U.S. healthcare system in this misguided quest. With our lawsuit, we aim to protect common sense, science and the rule of law — not to mention the physical and mental health of people experiencing gender dysphoria.”

Rokita’s office said covered entities that fail to follow the HHS rule risk the loss of significant federal funding — including Medicaid funding designed to assist low-income individuals. They also risk exposure to civil liability through private lawsuits.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi and is led by attorneys general in Tennessee and Mississippi. It asks the court to enjoin and invalidate the 2024 nondiscrimination in health programs and activities rule.

Other states listed as plaintiffs are Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia.

“Purporting to implement the Affordable Care Act’s prohibition on ‘sex’ discrimination, HHS’s 2024 Rule threatens States and healthcare providers with massive penalties for failing to align their policies, coverage decisions, and even medical care with patients’ subjective gender identities rather than sex,” the complaint states.

The case is State of Tennessee et.al  v. Xavier Becerra, in his official capacity as Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Services; United States Department of Health Services; Melanie Fontes Rainer, in her official capacity as the Director of the Office for Civil Rights; Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; and Chiquita Brooks-Lasure, in her official capacity as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 1:24-cv-161