A federal judge on Thursday struck down a Biden-era rule that expanded federal discrimination protections to encompass gender identity and forced health care providers to perform transgender procedures.
U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. sided with Tennessee and fourteen other states that sued the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over the rule. Guirola said that the HHS overstepped its legal authority by expanding Title IX discrimination protections to gender identity.
“In the opinion of the Court, Congress only contemplated biological sex when it enacted Title IX in 1972,” the judge wrote. “Therefore, the Court finds that HHS exceeded its authority by implementing regulations redefining sex discrimination and prohibiting gender-identity discrimination.”
The rule had been put forth by the Biden administration on May 6, 2024. Despite the changeover in administration, the states still worried that the rule could be enforced against them in the future. Lawyers for Trump’s HHS argued that the states should fear no action from the federal government because of Trump’s crackdown on transgender ideology.
Guirola said that since the rule was still in place, the “threat of enforcement and legal action is real” and that the resolution of the legal questions at the heart of the suit would “provide much-needed clarity.”
He said that the rule would have blocked state-created health benefit exchanges, recipients of Medicaid and Medicare, and others from denying transgender medical procedures.
“When it enacted Title IX, Congress’s concern was prohibiting sex discrimination in education. It was particularly concerned with inequality that female students experienced. It did not at that time contemplate gender identity, transgender status, or ‘gender-affirming care,’” Guirola wrote.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti celebrated the decision from the court.
“When Biden-era bureaucrats tried to illegally rewrite our laws to force radical gender ideology into every corner of American health care, Tennessee stood strong and stopped them,” Skrmetti said. “This decision restores not just common sense but also constitutional limits on federal overreach, and I am proud of the team of excellent attorneys who fought this through to the finish.”
Skrmetti argued that the rule would have blocked hospitals from maintaining sex-segregated spaces and forced states to subsidize transgender procedures through their Medicaid programs.
The Republican attorneys general of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, and West Virginia all signed on to the suit.
Through a series of executive orders, President Donald Trump has sought to reverse Biden’s adoption of transgender ideology. As part of that, he ordered a review of all executive actions taken by Biden on the issue.
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