Florida sues Biden administration over rule requiring ‘dangerous, irreversible’ gender procedures

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis listens as Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody speaks during a press conference at the Broward County Courthouse on Aug. 18, 2022, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. / Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

CNA Staff, May 7, 2024 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

The attorney general of Florida on Tuesday announced a lawsuit against the Biden administration over new federal rules requiring insurers to cover gender-based surgeries and medical procedures. 

The lawsuit, filed on Monday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, is meant to halt the White House’s attempt to “force the state to pay for puberty blockers and gender-transition surgery for children,” Attorney General Ashley Moody said in a press release.

The administration’s recently promulgated rule, filed in the Federal Register on Monday and set to go into effect in July, amends the nondiscrimination clause in Section 1557 of the federal Affordable Care Act by expanding the definition of “sex” to include “gender identity,” among other new additions. 

The change means that any insurer or physician receiving federal financial assistance must cover or provide sex-reassignment surgeries and therapies on the grounds that refusal to do so would constitute discrimination based on sex.

Florida is among the numerous states that in recent months and years have passed bans on extremist gender surgeries and drug prescriptions for minors. Moody in her press release said Florida state law “protect[s] our children from dangerous, irreversible gender-transition drugs and surgeries.”

But, she argued, the Biden administration is “trying to go around our child-protection law to force the state to pay for puberty blockers and gender-transition surgery for children.” 

“These rules trample states’ power to protect their own citizens and we will not stand by as Biden tries, yet again, to use the force of the federal government to unlawfully stifle Florida’s effort to protect children,” Moody said. 

Moody said the state was asking the court to “vacate the 2024 rules,” issue a permanent injunction against them, order that the rules “are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious,” and several other requests. 

The attorney general’s office said they were joined by several other parties in the suit, including the Catholic Medical Association.

In addition to its revision of federal medical rules, the Biden administration last month issued a major revision to federal Title IX education rules that implements similar transgender-reflated requirements. 

The new education policy redefines the prohibition on sex discrimination for schools and education programs that receive federal funding, directing that the rules apply to any form of discrimination that is based on a person’s self-purported “gender identity.”

Those revisions could jeopardize state laws that restrict women’s sports and women’s locker rooms to only women, legal scholars told CNA last month.