Florida Asks Court to Halt HHS Transgender Health Rule (1)

The state of Florida is asking a federal court to stop the Biden administration’s civil rights protections for transgender and other LGBTQ people from going into effect while a courtroom battle with the government plays out.

Florida said that the Department of Health and Human Services’ rule the state is challenging would be effective July 5 unless the court grants the state’s request for a stay.

Should the rule go into effect, “Florida will face an untenable choice: renounce its sovereign interest in protecting the health and safety of its citizens and suffer irrecoverable costs, or lose federal financial assistance from HHS, an untenable option,” the state said in its motion. “Without temporary relief, Florida will remain caught between the 2024 Rules and Florida law, facing ‘actual and imminent’ injury to its sovereign interests and unrecoverable monetary loss”

Florida’s Wednesday request comes about a week after the state sued the HHS over its rule interpreting Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act as prohibiting health-care discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. That lawsuit accuses the rule of forcing doctors to perform gender-affirming care surgery.

The HHS believes it has “the extraordinary power” to put out rules that compel “States to allow and even pay for controversial ‘gender-transition’ interventions,” Florida said in its request for a stay, filed with the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Additionally, the agency’s “attempt to drastically expand the contours of sex discrimination runs headlong into binding Eleventh Circuit precedent,” Florida said.

The HHS declined to comment on Florida’s stay request.

In its rule, the HHS said that “providers do not have an affirmative obligation to offer any health care, including gender-affirming care, that they do not think is clinically appropriate or if religious freedom and conscience protections apply.”

The rule has since faced another legal challenge from a Mississippi children’s clinic.

Florida in its case argues the rule unlawfully tries preempting the state’s “laws, regulations, and standards of care restricting gender-transition interventions and preventing the use of public funds for these purposes.”

The state also said that should the rule go into effect, it would need to “amend the State Group Health Insurance Program to cover gender-transition interventions, suffering irrecoverable monetary losses to administer and fund such payments while this suit proceeds.”

The case is Florida v. HHS, M.D. Fla., No. 24-cv-01080, stay request filed 5/15/24.