Health Protections for Gay and Transgender People are Back in Place Thanks to the Biden Administration.

A policy from the Trump administration was changed by the Health and Human Services Department when they approved a rule that says discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal.

On Friday, the Biden administration announced broad new protections for gay and transgender medical patients. These include a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity by publicly funded health providers and insurers.

The new rule goes against a policy put in place by the Trump administration. It also helps President Biden keep part of his promise to bring back civil rights protections for LGBT people that were taken away by his predecessor.

The health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, said in a statement, “Today’s rule is a giant step forward for this country toward a more fair and inclusive health care system. It means that Americans across the country now have a clear way to act on their rights against discrimination when they go to the doctor, talk to their health plan, or participate in H.H.S. health programs.”

The rule changes federal policy in an area that has become a political flashpoint: in the past few years, more than 20 Republican-led states have banned or limited gender-affirming care for minors. The rule is expected to be challenged in court. The political sensitivity is clear even in the past of the rule: Under three different leaders, it has now changed three times.

Through Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which was passed in 2010, the U.S. health system now has a wide range of civil rights guarantees. It says that patients can’t be treated differently because of their race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability in “any health program or activity” that gets government funds. This includes a lot of different parts of the U.S. health system.

In 2016, the Obama administration released a less broad version of the rule that the Biden administration approved on Friday. This rule requires health care providers to treat transgender patients in a way that is medically appropriate. At the time, officials said that the Affordable Care Act protected people from abuse based on their gender identity. The Obama rule got bogged down in lawsuits, and the Trump government chose not to enforce it.

Conservatives who are against the rule have said that it could force doctors to do medical procedures they might not have wanted to do, even if it was because of their religion. In 2020, the Trump administration officially changed the legal meaning of sex discrimination so that transgender people are no longer protected.

The rule that was finalized by the Biden administration on Friday says that religious exemptions will still be given and that it “does not require or mandate the provision of any particular medical service.”

The rule says that Section 1557 doesn’t allow discrimination based on certain illegal grounds, and it doesn’t get in the way of a doctor making an individual decision about the best way to care for a patient.

In 2020, the Supreme Court said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s ban on discrimination based on sex also covered discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This meant that the Biden administration started to undo the policy that the Trump administration had put in place.

Republicans kept working to keep the rule from the Trump administration in place. After the Biden administration released a draft of the rule that was finally put in place on Friday, a group of Republican attorneys general wrote to Mr. Becerra to say that they might sue the Health and Human Services Department if it went ahead with the policy.

Both supporters and opponents of the rule plan looked closely at it. The Health and Human Services Department said on Friday that more than 85,000 people had written to them.

It was praised by groups that wanted to get rid of the rule from the Trump administration’s time on Friday. The head of the Human Rights Campaign, Kelley Robinson, said, “Many Americans can now take comfort in knowing that they cannot be denied health care they need because of who they are or who they love.”