Texas Files Suit Against Feds Over Transgender Transition Procedure Guidelines For Doctors [UPDATED]

AUSTIN, TX — Texas on Tuesday filed another lawsuit against the federal government, this one as part of its ongoing fight with the Obama administration over a regulation barring discrimination against transgender individuals among some health programs.

The state filed the lawsuit in federal court on behalf of Franciscan Alliance, a faith-based hospital network, and four other states claiming the federal regulation would force doctors to perform gender transition procedures on children, the Texas Tribune reported.

The new federal rule that's the basis of the suit is designed to prohibit denying or limiting health coverage for transgender people, the Tribune reported. This includes health services related to gender transitioning.

The Texas Attorney General's office said Tuesday afternoon the lawsuit is an effort to protect physicians from being forced to perform "controversial services" for their patients.

"The impact of this new rule on Texas and health care workers is significant," the AG's office said in a statement. "Not only does the rule require taxpayers to fund all treatments designed to transition to a different sex, it also forces health care workers, including physicians, to provide controversial services."

The AG's office added the federal guidelines potentially promote procedures not in the best interest of patients requesting them or may be antithetical to doctors' religious beliefs.

"Under the new rule, a physician that believes that certain treatments are not in a patient’s best medical interests may be in violation of federal law," the attorney general's office said in the statement. "And a physician that, for religious or conscientious reasons cannot perform a particular procedure, chooses to instead refer a patient to another health care provider may also be determined to be in violation of this new rule."

Officials at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, representing the Franciscan Alliance, announced the intentions to sue the government over the policy. A spokesman for the Texas attorney general's office told the Tribune that the suit was filed in the Wichita Falls district court Tuesday morning.

The filing comes just one day after a federal judge from that same court, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, temporarily blocked another Obama administration move to accommodate transgender students. That suit was centered on federal guidelines calling for schools to adhere to students' gender identities in complying with non-discriminatory laws — including a proposed federal mandate that would allow transgender schoolchildren to use the bathrooms matching their gender identities.

Conservative Texas opponents of the "bathroom law" contend the accommodation of transgender students would open the doors to sexual predators in school restrooms.

On Tuesday afternoon, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a press release alluding to the state's prolific pace of lawsuits against the federal government. As with the other lawsuits — filed in response to proposed federal guidelines ranging from immigration reform to voter identification safeguards — Paxton painted the state's latest litigation as a tactic to protect rights safeguarded by the U.S. Constitution.

“This is the thirteenth lawsuit I have been forced to bring against the Obama Administration’s continued threats on constitutional rights of Texans,” Paxton said in a prepared statement. “The federal government has no right to force Texans to pay for medical procedures designed to change a person’s sex. I am disappointed in the Obama Administration’s lack of consideration for medical professionals who believe that engaging in such procedures or treatment violates their Hippocratic Oath, their conscience, or their personal religious beliefs, which are protected by the Constitution and federal law.”

The GOP majority in Texas often boasts of suing the federal government under President Barack Obama, often on cases that are at odds with their base from a political ideological standpoint. Since Obama took office in 2009, Texas has sued the federal government more than 43 times.

The prolific nature of that litigation yields "...a point of pride for the state's Republican leaders," the Texas Tribune recently noted.

“Already I have filed 30 lawsuits against President Barack Obama and his administration and I am not done yet,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott boasted two years ago.

The governor is fond of referencing his brisk pace of suing Obama, often referencing the frequency of litigation in speeches: "I go into the office in the morning. I sue Barack Obama, and then I go home," he often tells supporters.

Read the full story at Texas Tribune >>