Federal government workers are suing the Trump administration over a new policy which took effect on January 1 and bars federal health insurance programs from covering so-called “gender-affirming care” services.
The Human Rights Campaign, a liberal LGBTQ civil rights organization, filed the complaint on behalf of the government employees.
In August, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management announced the policy change, explaining federal health insurance will no longer cover “chemical and surgical modification of an individual’s sex traits through medical interventions.”
The class action complaint claims the policy violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race and sex, and demands the administration rescind the policy and provide payment for various damages inflicted on government workers.
The Trump administration has pursued a whole-of-government approach to rolling back the Biden-era effort to promote transgender medical interventions and to open female-only spaces to males, including in hospitals and schools.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. notably deemed it “malpractice” to perform medical interventions such as surgery or hormone therapy on minors.
Besides the change in policy regarding insurance coverage, HHS also proposed new rules that will ban hospitals from using Medicare or Medicaid funds to cover transgender procedures for minors. Trump’s Department of Education has also taken steps to withdraw federal funding from public schools that push gender ideology on their students.
“This policy is not about cost or care — it is about driving transgender people and people with transgender spouses, children, and dependents out of the federal workforce,” Human Rights Campaign Foundation President Kelley Robinson said in a statement regarding the complaint.
Filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the complaint includes testimonies from federal employees who claim they would be directly and negatively affected by the change in coverage. One testimony, for example, comes from a Postal Service employee, who claims to have a daughter with diagnosed gender dysphoria. Doctors insist the daughter receive hormone therapy, a service that is no longer covered per the Trump administration’s new directive.
The healthcare plans affected by the policy change include Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) and Postal Service Health Benefits (PSHB) plans.
Neither the Human Rights Campaign nor the Office of Personnel Management responded to National Review‘s request for comment by the time of publication.