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Medical and Mental Health Groups Tell HHS: No License to Discriminate!

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Throughout 2017, the Trump Administration sought to promote a false “right to discriminate” using the banner of religious exemption. Following the President’s Executive Order, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a sweeping memo on “religious liberty,” which mixed well-established legal principles with extreme claims of a right to discriminate.

In October, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) invited the public to identify policies and regulations that should be eliminated, in an attempt to make it easier for religious organizations to receive federal funds. The federal Regulations.gov website showed that HHS received over 12,000 comments, but for weeks the Administration refused to make them public, except for a few dozen comments mostly calling for the repeal of regulations recognizing health care protections for transgender people.

After NCTE and others protested and filed FOIA requests, HHS relented and published the public comments online December 22. They showed overwhelming opposition to discrimination, and strong support for thelandmark rules recognizing transgender health care protections — including from the nation’s leading medical and mental health organizations.

Read more at NCTE's Medium page.

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