The U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota issued an order Monday that temporarily halts enforcement of two Biden administration mandates forcing religious employers and health care providers – both non-profit and for-profit – to pay for and perform surgeries, procedures, counseling, and treatments that seek to alter one's biological sex, even if such actions violate the employers' or providers' religious beliefs.
"All employers and health care providers – including those in our client's organization, Christian Employers Alliance – should have the constitutional right recognized to conduct their business and their organizations and provide medical treatment consistent with their deeply held religious beliefs," says attorney Matt Bowman of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the law firm representing Christian Employers Alliance.
In Christian Employers Alliance v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the ADF lawsuit argued the EEOC is misinterpreting and improperly enforcing discrimination based on sex in Title VII to force religious employers to pay for and provide health insurance coverage for life-altering medical procedures or surgeries that seek to change a person's biological sex.
Bowman explains that the employers ADF represents "believe that God purposely created humans as either male or female and [that] the Biden administration should not be telling them that they have to promote these dangerous procedures or pay for them or even perform them …."
While this battle may involve the Biden administration, Bowman says the Obama administration got the ball rolling when it tried to rewrite civil rights law to impose what they call "gender identity" non-discrimination mandates, even for children.
"What the court has done this week," the ADF attorney adds, "said that entities, businesses, and nonprofits that are members of Christian Employers Alliance … are protected from these mandates while the case proceeds – and we're very pleased with that and are going to continue to fight to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans."
