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- The Biden administration is restoring anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Americans.
- The move revives a ban on LGBTQ+ discrimination by federally-funded medical providers.
- Those protections were scaled back under the Trump administration.
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The Biden administration is restoring federal anti-discrimination protections for transgender Americans in healthcare, the Associated Press and Washington Post report.
The soon-be-restored protections for LGBTQ+ Americans against discrimination by healthcare providers that receive federal funding were initially included in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which took a broad view of sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Those protections were significantly scaled back under President Donald Trump.
The move by Biden's Department of Health and Human Services reverses a Trump-era policy that sought to limit the definition of prohibited sex discrimination in healthcare by HHS-funded healthcare providers only to biological sex, not sexual orientation or gender identity.
The new guidance also follows the June 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, a landmark ruling that extended the protections of the 1960 Civil Rights Act banning sex-based discrimination in the workplace to LGBTQ+ individuals.
"The Supreme Court has made clear that people have a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sex and receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation," Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement, according to the Post.
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Under the new guidance, the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights can officially investigate reported cases of sexual orientation or gender identity-based discrimination and levy punishments and fines on providers who violate the law, the AP reported.