US federal employees file complaint against ban on gender-affirming care | Trump administration
The Trump administration is facing a new legal complaint from a group of government employees affected by a new policy that goes into effect Thursday that eliminates coverage of gender-affirming care in federal health insurance programs.
The complaint, filed Thursday by the Human Rights Campaign on behalf of employees, was in response to an August announcement by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that health insurance programs for federal employees and U.S. Postal Service employees would no longer cover “chemical and surgical alteration of an individual’s sex characteristics through medical interventions.”
The complaint argues that denying coverage of gender-affirming care is discrimination based on sex and asks the personnel office to rescind the policy.
“This policy is not about cost or care; it is about moving transgender individuals and their transgender spouses, children, and dependents out of the federal workforce,” Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, said in a statement announcing the move.
The complaint, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, includes testimony from four current federal employees who work for the state department, health and human services and the postal service, and who would be directly affected by the coverage elimination.
For example, the postal service worker has a daughter whose doctors recommended she take puberty blockers and potentially hormone replacement therapy for diagnosed gender dysphoria, which is not covered by the new OPM policy, according to the complaint.
The workers made the request on behalf of themselves and a “similarly situated class of federal employees,” the complaint says.
The Trump administration has taken other steps to restrict care for transgender Americans, especially minors. In December, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued proposals to block gender-affirming care for minors, including blocking Medicare and Medicaid dollars to hospitals that provide such care to children.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Top Trump officials such as have called gender-affirming care for minors “malpractice.” But such restrictions go against the recommendations of major medical groups such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
