According to Obama’s department of Health and Human Services (HHS) a doctor who does not want to do gender change surgery for a child (or an insurance company who doesn’t want to cover it) is being discriminatory. Same thing with performing and covering abortions. They even created a rule covering their opinion which was due to be enforced beginning in the new year.

But while the rest of us were preparing for New Year’s Eve celebrations on Saturday, US District Court Judge Reed O’Connor was issuing a nationwide injunction stopping the enforcement of Obama’s HHS new rules that were added added to the sex nondiscrimination requirement found in Obamacare.

The original Obamacare law has text designed to prevent insurers from charging customers more or denying coverage based on age, race, national origin, disability or sex. HHS recently added a regulation that was supposed to take affect on Jan.1. The regulation advised that sex discrimination includes “discriminating on the basis of ‘gender identity’ and ‘termination of pregnancy.'”

Texas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kentucky, Kansas, Louisiana, Arizona, and Mississippi joined an association of almost 18,000 doctors, and a Catholic hospital system represented by the Becket fund to file the lawsuit.

The plaintiff’s claim was that the federal government was redefining the term “sex” to “thwart decades of settled precedent” and impose “massive new obligations” on health care providers. Additionally in the gender re-assignment part of the rule it took the opinion of what’s the best care for the patient out of the doctor’s hands. In the case of children re-assignment may be bad for the patient:

The Becket fund points to scientific research that points to the fact that most children identified with Gender Dysphoria grow out of it when they reach puberty:

According to the World Professional Association for Transgender Help (WPATH) transgender standards of care, which HHS relies on, “In most children, gender dysphoria will disappear before, or early in, puberty.” Indeed, WPATH’s recommended studies demonstrate that up to 94% of children referred for gender dysphoria (77-94% in one set of studies and 73-88% in another) will grow out of their gender dysphoria naturally.

 

Other researchers note that “[e]very study that has been conducted on this has found the same thing. At the moment there is strong evidence that even many children with rather severe gender dysphoria will, in the long run, shed it and come to feel comfortable with the bodies they were born with.”

The plaintiffs also argued that the new HHS rule violated the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Obama administration was “forcing them to choose between federal funding and their livelihood as healthcare providers and their exercise of religion,” they wrote in a court filing.

In his 46-page injunction Judge O’ Connor agreed, “Plaintiffs will be forced to either violate their religious beliefs or maintain their current policies which seem to be in direct conflict with the Rule and risk the severe consequences of enforcement,” he wrote.

The judge also found that the plaintiffs had standing to bring the lawsuit because they “have presented concrete evidence to support their fears that they will be subject to enforcement under the Rule.”

O’Connor held that the HHS rule, “violates the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law governing rule-making practices. The judge also ruled that plaintiffs were likely to prevail in court on their claim that the new policy infringes on the rights of private healthcare providers under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

As explained in O’Connor’s 46-page opinion, the plaintiffs argued that the new regulation would “require them to perform and provide insurance coverage for gender transitions and abortions, regardless of their contrary religious beliefs or medical judgment.”

Earlier this week Judge O’Connor blocked Obama’s rule allowing transgender students to use the school bathroom and locker rooms of their choice.

Saturday was a victory for religious freedom, a slap in the face to the “Religion-phobic’  Obama administration and a great way to end 2016.