The Trump administration is facing a new legal complaint from federal employees who say a forthcoming change to their health benefits discriminates based on sex, according to the complaint filed Thursday and reported by The Associated Press.
The policy is set to go into effect Thursday and would eliminate coverage for gender-affirming care in federal health insurance programs for federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers, according to the AP report. The change traces to an August announcement by the Office of Personnel Management that it would no longer cover “chemical and surgical modification of an individual’s sex traits through medical interventions” in those federal health insurance programs.
In the complaint, the employees argue that the denial of coverage amounts to sex-based discrimination, and they ask OPM to rescind the policy, AP reported. The complaint was filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and includes statements from employees at agencies including the State Department, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Postal Service who said they would be affected by the elimination of coverage.
Human Rights Campaign Foundation President Kelley Robinson said in a statement announcing the move that the policy “is not about cost or care — it is about driving transgender people and people with transgender spouses, children, and dependents out of the federal workforce,” according to the AP report. The complaint says the workers are making the claim on behalf of themselves and a “class of similarly situated federal employees,” the report said.
The AP report described one example included in the filing: a Postal Service employee with a daughter whose doctors recommended puberty blockers and potentially hormone replacement therapy for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which the complaint says would not be covered under the new OPM policy.
The complaint also places the new federal benefits change in a broader context of Trump administration actions restricting gender-affirming care. The AP report said the complaint cited proposals released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in December that would block gender-affirming care for minors, including a proposal to bar Medicare and Medicaid dollars to hospitals that provide such care to children.
According to the AP report, senior Trump officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have called gender-affirming care “malpractice” for minors. The AP report also said such restrictions go against recommendations from major medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.