This just in on the Saturday Afternoon News Dump: Federal Judge Reed O’Connor has issued a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of the Obama Administration’s policy protections for transgender and abortion-related health care services before such policies were to take effect tomorrow.
Note that this is the same judge who issued an injunction blocking President Obama and his administration’s transgender schools guidance directive.
Chris Geidner at BuzzFeed News:
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Texas on Saturday issued a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of Obama administration protections for transgender and abortion-related healthcare services just one day before they were due to go into effect.
The lawsuit — brought by Texas, a handful of other states, and some religiously affiliated nonprofit medical groups — challenges a regulation implementing the sex nondiscrimination requirement found in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation “forbids discriminating on the basis of ‘gender identity’ and ‘termination of pregnancy’” under Obamacare, as US District Court Judge Reed O’Connor wrote in his opinion halting enforcement of those provisions in the rule.
Explaining the lawsuit, O’Connor wrote, “Plaintiffs claim the Rule’s interpretation of sex discrimination pressures doctors to deliver healthcare in a manner that violates their religious freedom and thwarts their independent medical judgment and will require burdensome changes to their health insurance plans on January 1, 2017.”
Document of injunction, via Document Cloud.
Sad day for America.