Last week, the Trump administration made a formal
announcement that it would no longer be enforcing existing regulations from the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) established during President
Obama’s second term prohibiting discrimination within HHS-funded programs based
on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or religion. The administration
also announced that they would also be giving themselves the authority to no
longer require HHS-funded programs to recognize same-sex marriages.
In place of the Obama-era non-discrimination regulations,
the Trump administration is planning to release a proposed rule that would allow
any program receiving HHS funding to discriminate based on sex, sexual
orientation, gender identity, or religion in the provision of services. The administration
has defended this decision by saying that HHS grant-funding would require that
programs not discriminate against those seeking their services, “to
the extent doing so is prohibited by federal statute.” There are currently
no explicit statutory protections concerning sexual orientation or gender
identity.
This new proposed rule is a systemic violation of the basic
human rights of tens of millions of people that rewards organizations for overt
discrimination. Each year, HHS awards more than $500 billion in the form of
grants and contracts to organizations that, if the Trump administration gets
its way, can now use the tax dollars of LGBTQ Americans to refuse service to
LGBTQ Americans. If this proposed rule were to go into law, HHS would be able to
provide grant money to an HIV prevention organization that refused to provide
services for transgender women or an adoption agency that refused to work with
qualified same-sex couples looking to become parents.
It is also worth noting that this proposed rule is distinct
from the administration’s “conscience rule”, which would permit health care
providers to refuse to participate in abortions and other types of care that
they disagree with on religious or moral grounds, and which was blocked
by a federal judge earlier this week.
The proposed new rule directly undermines President Trump’s Ending
the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America earlier this year. It additionally undermines the trust that leadership
at HHS have requested from the HIV community in the rollout of the plan. This plan also conflicts with promises that
they would support LGBTQ individuals and tamp down on discriminatory policies
against them and other marginalized groups that had been supported by the Trump
administration.
These promises have been a hard sell among HIV advocates, including
LGBTQ people of color who had seen themselves particularly vilified and
ostracized by the same Trump administration that was now purporting to help
them. However, despite the commission of past injustices, there were many who
were willing to give the architects of the ending the epidemic plan another
chance to show they had changed. As of right now, the Trump administration is
squandering that chance.
AIDS United is strongly opposed to the Trump
administration’s non-enforcement of existing protections for individuals based
on sexual orientation, gender identity, sex, or religion, and will fight to
prevent their proposed rule that would condone and encourage the violation of
those protections. Such a rule is incompatible with any successful plan to end
the HIV epidemic.
Please check back with AIDS United’s policy update regularly
for more information on how to combat this discriminatory proposed rule once it
is formally released.
Posted By: AIDS United, Policy Department - Friday, November 08, 2019
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