By Jarrett Staff
October 23, 2021
-Gregg Jarrett
The Biden administration is facing lawsuits over two mandates which force religious nonprofit and for-profit employers to fund “gender transition surgeries, procedures, counseling, and treatments.”
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed the motion in federal district court in Bozeman, Montana to stop enforcement of the mandated measure immediately. The alliance filed the motion on behalf of the Christian employers group, the Christian Employers Alliance (CEA).
ADF’s senior counsel Matt Bowman said President Biden has “far overreached his constitutional authority” by enforcing federal law “to the detriment of people of faith across the country.” In the statement Bowman added, “the government cannot force Christian employers to pay for, or physically perform, harmful medical procedures that contradict their religious beliefs.”
Bowman refers to the mandate by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services which reinterprets “sex” to include gender identity. The lawsuit claims enforcement of the mandate requires religious health care providers to “physically perform, facilitate, or promote gender transition surgeries and procedures that are contrary to their deeply held religious beliefs and expert medical judgment.”
Additionally, the complaint argues the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is misinterpreting, and therefore improperly enforcing, the definition of sex discrimination included in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by forcing employers to cover medical expenses for gender transition procedures which are in violation of their religious beliefs.
CEA’s President Shannon Royce released a statement explaining “employers and entrepreneurs, like many Americans, are growing increasingly concerned by rising costs that can be blamed in part on oppressive government mandates.”
“These gender transition mandates greatly exacerbate this problem by threatening religious employers with punishing fines, burdensome litigation costs, the loss of federal funds, and even criminal penalties” added Royce.
Finally, she states that mandates create “a unique quagmire of concerns for religious healthcare providers by forcing them to speak positively about gender transition procedures even if they disagree with them.”
