Articles and Blogs

On December 31, 2016, a federal district court in Texas issued a preliminary injunction to prevent HHS from enforcing those few portions of the regulations implementing Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) that interpret the prohibition against “sex” discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of “gender identity” and “termination of pregnancy.”... READ MORE

On August 23, 2016, eight plaintiffs jointly sued the federal Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) disputing the definition of the term “sex” in recent HHS regulations implementing the Affordable Care Act’s (“ACA”) non-discrimination provisions. A link to the Complaint is here.  The HHS regulations, which, among other things, protect patients who receive... READ MORE

Sex Transformation Surgery In a lawsuit filed in June in the Northern District of California, an operating room nurse claims that his hospital system employer, because of his sex, refused to provide insurance coverage related to his sex transformation. The plaintiff alleges that the hospital’s conduct violates both Title VII of the Civil Rights... READ MORE

On August 18, 2016, Judge Sean F. Cox in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ruled that a funeral home business did not violate the law when it terminated a transgender employee who wished to dress as a woman. This decision is significant because it is one of the first... READ MORE

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) recently published resource documents on two hot topics in the labor and employment world: bathroom access for transgender employees and leaves of absence for disabled workers. The EEOC notes that its resource documents do not create new policy, are not voted on by the Commission and are... READ MORE