When Governor Doug Burgum signed a bill last year in North Dakota banning most transgender medical procedures for children, adults were still left with the option to receive the treatment. That law has been challenged repeatedly and it’s still bouncing around in the courts. But just because adults are exempted, that doesn’t mean that their employers are required to offer health insurance coverage for such procedures. The idea that such coverage must be offered was challenged in court and on Monday a U.S. District Court judge ruled that Christian employers cannot be forced to do so based on their First Amendment right to religious freedom. You can expect this ruling to be similarly appealed as well. (Washington Examiner)
Christian employers cannot be forced to offer health insurance coverage to employees that covers gender transition treatments, a North Dakota federal judge ruled on Monday!
U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor in Bismark issued a decision on Monday saying that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Health and Human Services have impinged upon the beliefs of the Christian Employers Alliance in attempting to require all employers to cover gender transition treatments for their employees.
HHS and EEOC changed their interpretation of a section in Obamacare that prevents discrimination based upon sex following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020 that sexual orientation and gender identity are included in employment anti-discrimination protections.
This battle is just the latest that centers around a provision from Obamacare that forbids discrimination based on sex. The current administration has expanded the definition of “sex” to include “gender identity.” Unfortunately, as noted above, the Supreme Court has already ruled that supposed gender identity can be included in that description, giving liberals a leg up in such debates.
How well this decision will stand up under appeal is difficult to predict. To be clear, I do not buy for a moment the idea that human beings can “change their sex” through surgery or any other means. You don’t need to rely on the Bible to inform you of that much. It’s just basic science. So forcing anyone to pay for such “services” if they hold similar beliefs strikes me as inherently wrong.
But is this really a violation of people’s Freedom of Religion and should it only be applied specifically to Christians? It may sound like I’m playing the devil’s advocate here, but I’m not really clear on how the courts can arrive at that conclusion. Yes, the Bible makes it clear repeatedly starting in the Book of Genesis that God created people in two flavors, male and female. And unless a virgin is being visited by a Heavenly presence, both genders are required for reproduction.
Yet I’ve gone searching on a couple of occasions and I haven’t seen any reference to God forbidding people from changing their gender or even trying to do so. That’s just not the sort of thing that would have come up in Biblical times, I suppose. (I’m open to being proven wrong about that, so please let me know if you’ve found such a reference.) The point is that if it’s not specifically forbidden in the Bible, is paying for an elective surgical procedure that’s being requested by an employee contrary to the employer’s religious freedom?
That’s where this question begins to become murky. If we’re going to have a final answer from the courts I would far prefer to see a more solid case brought before the Supreme Court asking them to rule whether sex and “gender identity” are inextricably intertwined or whether they should be treated separately. Perhaps during the same oral arguments, the justices could be asked the underlying question… what is a woman? If even they can’t come up with an answer, then society has fallen even further than I had feared and abandoned realistic scientific practices even more than many have abandoned or even attacked religion.