This year, the Trump administration told insurance carriers to strip gender transition care from federal employee insurance plans.
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Transgender federal employees sued the Trump administration Monday for prohibiting health insurance coverage for gender transition care, citing civil rights protections against sex discrimination.
Five workers represented by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation argued that the Office of Personnel Management violated Title VII when it instructed insurance providers in January to eliminate coverage for gender transition care. The lawsuit compared the categorical denial of treatment as “akin to denying continuing insulin treatment for someone with diabetes.”
This prohibition on gender-transition-care coverage applies to all federal employees and their family members, regardless of age. Researchers have estimated that 40,000 to 58,000 transgender people are covered by the federal health plans.
Those suing the government include a transgender employee at the State Department who has paid hundreds of dollars out of pocket after her ongoing hormone replacement therapy was no longer covered. Another is a U.S. Postal Service worker and father to a transgender daughter. A third is a Health and Human Services Department employee who will need to pay $1,000 per year for hormone replacement therapy and $6,000 for gender transition surgery.
“Federal employees have been through the wringer with the Trump administration,” said Cathy Harris, a partner at Correia & Puth, one of the firms representing the workers. “We draw the line at blatant discrimination to deny health care to our nation’s dedicated civil servants.”
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After OPM’s health care change went into effect, the workers filed formal complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and have sought class status. Administrative judges have been told not to move forward with class discrimination claims, The Washington Post previously reported.
Separately, two Republican members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that insurers can limit federal workers’ insurance coverage for gender transition treatment, citing the Supreme Court’s decision last year to uphold a Tennessee law prohibiting gender transition care for minors. OPM celebrated the commission’s decision and said it affirms the agency’s authority to balance “responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars, along with the biological reality of sex differences.”
The Trump administration’s actions on transgender care have not been limited to federal workers, as the government has also attempted to limit gender transition care for minors. Last year, officials announced plans to ban Medicaid and Medicare funding for any services at hospitals that provide pediatric gender transition care. That proposed rulemaking has not moved forward since public comments closed in February.
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