Today, Lambda Legal and Steptoe & Johnson LLP filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently published health care discrimination rule that purports to carve out LGBTQ people and other vulnerable populations from the protections of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, among other bases. The lawsuit, Whitman-Walker Clinic v. HHS, is filed on behalf of Whitman-Walker Health, the TransLatin@ Coalition and its members (including leaders of affiliated organizations like Arianna’s Center in Florida), Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, the Los Angeles LGBT Center, GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ Equality, AGLP: The Association of LGBTQ Psychiatrists, and four individual doctors. AGLP is a group of mental health professionals affiliated with the American Psychiatric Association who advocate and provide research for well-informed mental health care for the LGBTQ+ community.

“AGLP is grateful for the work of Lambda Legal and feels compelled to join in addressing this assault on the LGBTQ+ community,” Roy Harker, Executive Director of AGLP said during a virtual press conference announcing the lawsuit. “Creating this second class of citizens has been shown, through our research, and that of many other professional associations, to have a significant negative impact on the mental health of this population.  This action will only serve to promote more chaos within the mental health system where knowledge of LGBTQ+ issues is already lacking.”

“While HHS’s health care discrimination rule cannot change the law, it creates chaos and confusion where there was once clarity about the right of everyone in our communities, and specifically transgender people, to receive health care free of discrimination,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, Senior Attorney and Health Care Strategist for Lambda Legal. “Today, Lambda Legal, a broad coalition of LGBTQ groups, and the people our clients serve say ‘enough’ to the incessant attacks from the very agency charged with protecting their health and well-being. For years, the Trump administration has utilized HHS as a weapon to target and hurt vulnerable communities who already experience alarming rates of discrimination when seeking care, even now, during a global pandemic. Their actions are wrong, callous, immoral and legally indefensible. We will fight back.”

In 2016, the Obama administration finalized a rule implementing the nondiscrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act—also known as Section 1557—that prohibit discrimination based on gender identity, transgender status, or sex stereotypes as forms of sex discrimination.  In May 2019, however, the Trump administration announced a proposed rule change designed to roll back these protections, and notwithstanding that multiple federal courts—including most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court—have interpreted sex discrimination protections to protect LGBTQ people. The proposed rule would carve-out LGBTQ people from the Affordable Care Act’s nondiscrimination protections, and invite health care workers, doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies that receive federal funding to refuse to provide or cover health care services critical to the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ people, such as gender-affirming and reproductive care. The proposed rule would also limit the remedies available to people who face health disparities, limit the access to health care for people with Limited English Proficiency (LEP), and dramatically reduce the number of health care entities and insurance subject to the rule.

On Friday, June 19, 2020, HHS published the health care discrimination rule, which is scheduled to go into effect August 18, 2020.
“The healthcare discrimination rule endangers the health and lives of transgender people and all sexual and gender minorities, and this rule must be blocked,” Vargas said.

Read the Complaint here: https://bit.ly/GLMA1557

CLICK HERE to view the entire Press Conference.