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| Harmeet Dhillon. (2025, January 30). Wikipedia |
Donald Trump's executive orders restricting gender affirmative care come as dystopian changes have been made to the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division.
Trump's nominee to lead the assault against trans-affirming care is attorney Harmeet Dhillon, 56, who has spoken out against state laws that protect doctors who provide gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
Harmeet Dhillon believes that "Title IX was passed by Congress to protect women's rights—not the rights of men pretending to be women."
"Title IX was passed by Congress to protect women's rights—not the rights of men pretending to be women." @pnjaban breaks down the latest lawsuits against President Biden's new Title IX rules👇 pic.twitter.com/gfC9GjeyPF
— Center for American Liberty (@Liberty_Ctr) April 30, 2024
Erin Reed as promised weighed in on Donald Trump's Executive Order banning Trans Youth Care.
The Conversation U.S. interviewed Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute, an independent research center at the UCLA School of Law dedicated to studying sexual orientation and gender identity law. She describes the aims of the executive order, how much weight it carries, and how it should be understood in the broader context of legal battles over access to gender-affirming care.
Some key takeaways
The scope of the Executive Order
- Twenty-six states have already restricted gender-affirming care for minors or banned it outright. So the order seeks to extend restrictions to the rest of the country using the weight of the executive branch. However, it’s not a national ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Instead, it’s directing federal agencies to regulate and restrict this form of care.
Does the executive branch have the authority to unilaterally ban federal funding of certain medical treatments?
- The answer is a little mixed. A president might be able to suspend or put a temporary pause on funding a particular type of treatment or service. But the actual parameters of a program – and how agencies should implement them – are determined by Congress and, to some extent, by the courts.
Do private health insurers fall outside the scope of this executive order?
- On the surface, yes. But it’s easy to see how directives from the executive branch can touch broader components of the country’s health care system, including private hospitals and private health insurance.
- For example, Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act is a nondiscrimination provision. It says there can be no sex discrimination when it comes to approving health care treatments. This has been interpreted to mean that health insurance plans receiving federal funding cannot deny a policyholder gender-affirming care. However, this interpretation has been blocked by a federal court.
The Conversation has a coveted "Least Biased" rating from Media Bias Fact Check.
Trump’s executive orders can make change – but are limited and can be undone by the courts. First and foremost is U.S. v. Skrmetti presently being decided by the Supreme Court.
The question in this case is whether Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming hormone therapies for transgender minors violates the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. Tennessee’s ban, like every other passed by politicians in recent years, specifically permits these same hormone medications when they are provided in a way that Tennessee considers “consistent” with a person’s sex designated at birth. This means, for example, a doctor could prescribe estrogen to a cisgender teenage girl for any clinical diagnosis but could not do the same for a transgender girl diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
The ACLU argues that Tennessee’s ban is a clear example of discrimination on the basis of sex and transgender status making it a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. We made a similar argument in 2020 when, alongside other legal advocates, we successfully argued in front of the Supreme Court on behalf of LGBTQ clients fired because of their sexual orientation and gender identity, including a transgender woman fired from her job at a Michigan funeral home.
