Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody announced a lawsuit against the US Department of Health over funding for gender-altering drugs and surgeries. Below is an official statement released by Moody’s office:
Attorney General Ashley Moody filed suit against Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services over the administration’s attempt to force Florida to violate its own law and fund drugs and surgeries for “gender transition” for children. However, the promulgated rules go far beyond what is required by law and could result in a cost of around $200 million a year to the state.
“Florida passed a law to protect our children from dangerous, irreversible gender-transition drugs and surgeries,” Moody said. “Now, Biden and his federal bureaucrats are trying to go around our child-protection law to force the state to pay for puberty blockers and gender-transition surgery for children. These rules trample states’ power to protect their own citizens and we will not stand by as Biden tries, yet again, to use the force of the federal government to unlawfully stifle Florida’s effort to protect children.”
The administration is attempting to cite Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act “which forbids covered entities, including States, from discriminating in health programs or activities ‘on the ground prohibited under…title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972’”. However, according to the complaint, “the 2024 Rules go far beyond what Section 1557 and Title IX require. The 2024 Rules attempt to require Florida to fund drugs and surgeries for “gender-transition”; unlawfully limit States’ power to set protective standards of care for health care professionals; compel states to cover these gender-transition interventions in state-administered health care programs and employee insurance plans; and prevent States from protecting vulnerable residents—including children—from dangerous medical interventions that could render them infertile for life.”
Florida, and the more than 20 additional states who prohibit hormone treatment and surgery for minors, however, are not alone in their thinking. According to the complaint, in 2016, then-President Obama’s HHS concluded not requiring national coverage of gender-reassignment surgeries due to a lack of evidence that this surgery improves health outcomes. In 2020, then-President Trump’s HHS concluded, similarly, that there was not quality evidence supporting gender-change treatments.
Suddenly, in 2022, Biden’s HHS released a document entitled “Gender-Affirming Care and Young People”, claiming now that gender-affirming care improves mental health and well-being. According to the complaint, “HHS threatened to sue anyone who disagreed with this purported ‘standard of care’.”
Citing several reasons that these new rules are both unlawful, and cause harm to the state, Florida has asked the court to: vacate the 2024 rules, issue preliminary injunctive relief enjoining enforcement, issue permanent injunctive relief, enjoining enforcement, declare that the 2024 rules are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious, and more.
Attorney General Moody is joined in the lawsuit by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, the Florida Department of Management Services and the Catholic Medical Association.
Read the full complaint here.
Notably, just last month, Attorney General Moody, and a coalition of state attorneys general, challenged the Biden administration’s attempt to redefine “sex” to include “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” in Title IX.
