AMARILLO – U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled Friday the Biden administration had wrongly interpreted a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), colloquially known as Obamacare, as barring health care providers from discriminating against LGBTQ+ Americans.
Kacsmaryk wrote the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County in which it held that “an employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender violates Title VII.” The High Court’s opinion states that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”
The lawsuit was brought by two doctors represented by the America First Legal Foundation, set up by Stephen Miller, a former Trump White House official. The suit was filed after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a regulation in May 2021 outlying that its interpretation of Section 1557 of the ACA, which states that healthcare providers cannot discriminate on the basis of sex, extends to sexual orientation and gender identity.
