federal appeals court has permanently blocked the Biden administration’s mandate on doctors and hospitals forcing them to perform gender transition procedures against their conscience.
The Eighth Circuit appeals court is the second circuit to block the mandate, after the Fifth Circuit ruled similarly earlier this year in Franciscan Alliance v. Becerra. The plaintiffs, a coalition of Catholic hospitals, a Catholic university, and Catholic nuns who run healthcare clinics for the poor, were represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.“The federal government has no business forcing doctors to violate their consciences or perform controversial procedures that could permanently harm their patients,” Becket vice president and senior counsel Luke Goodrich said in a press release. “This is a common-sense ruling that protects patients, aligns with best medical practice, and ensures doctors can follow their Hippocratic Oath to ‘do no harm.’”After inheriting the mandate from the Obama administration, the Biden administration sought to force doctors to perform “gender transition” surgeries — mutilation — and prescribe puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone drugs, and other procedures.
Invoking the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Biden administration threatened noncompliant hospitals and doctors with millions of dollars in financial penalties, as it attempted to enforce its redefinition of discrimination on the basis of sex to include gender identity
