Shutterstock
In a complaint filed with the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC), four federal employees are challenging President Trump’s ban on covering gender-affirming care in federal health insurance policies. The employees
Last August, the administration notified the insurance companies covering federal workers and their families that as of Jan. 1, 2026 it would no longer cover “chemical and surgical modification of an individual’s sex traits through medical interventions.” However, the administration did say it would pay for counseling, include by “those who provide faith-based counseling.”
The complaint, filed on behalf of the employees by the Human Rights Campaign, says that the Trump policy violates protections on the basis of sex. The litigation says that the complaint is made not just on behalf of the four workers but for the entire class of workers affected by the policy change.
One of the four workers in the complaint is a postal worker whose daughter is undergoing gender-affirming threatment. Doctors had recommended that she receive puberty blockers and potentially hormone replacement therapy as part of her care.
“This policy is not about cost or care — it is about driving transgender people and people with transgender spouses, children, and dependents out of the federal workforce,” Human Rights Campaign Foundation President Kelley Robinson said.
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Unfortunately, the action faces a hostile reception due to Trump’s reconfiguring of the EEOC. He fired commissioners appointed by Democrats and replaced them with his own loyalists who exhibit a clear anti-trans bias. Chair Andrea Lucas lists “defending the biological and binary reality of sex” as one of her priorities in her official bio and the EEOC has been slow-walking pending complaints of anti-trans discrimination. According to a former information technology specialist, EEOC staff were instructed that any recognition of transgender and non-binary people needed to be “systematically erased” in both the EEOC’s internal and external materials.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.