On Monday, the Human Rights Campaign filed a lawsuit in D.C. against the Trump administration on behalf of employees of the federal government, who say the Office of Personnel Management is blatantly discriminating against them by denying coverage for gender-affirming care under their government-provided insurance.
Working with the Correia & Puth law firm, HRC is representing five pseudonymous plaintiffs in court (Doe, Goe, Coe, Poe and Roe—isn’t justice cute?) and “all persons similarly situated,” meaning the suit is a proposed class action that would apply to every federal employee affected by Trump’s restrictions on their healthcare.
Shortly after Trump took office in 2025, OPM issued guidance to federal agencies and insurance carriers participating in the Federal Employees Health Benefits program (and subsidiary program Postal Service Health Benefits, which provides coverage to United States Postal Service workers) declaring that employees’ documents must list sex as male or female, and that carrier plans for 2026 must “exclude coverage for pediatric transgender surgeries or hormone treatments for the purpose of gender transition.”
Despite using the word pediatric, OPM clarifies in the text that they mean anyone under the age of 19. Which includes, you know, people who are 18… also known as adults who have reached the age of majority, i.e., not children!
For people over the age of 18, carriers would be allowed to (but were not required to) offer coverage for gender-affirming care. Of course, “bona fide medical conditions” like precocious puberty would remain covered by the FEHB, because these treatments are only dangerous if you are transgender, even though transgender people are not real and do not exist.
In August of last year, OPM issued further guidance, stating that exceptions could be made for enrollees who were “mid-treatment,” without any real clarification on what that meant. They did clarify, however, that treatments such as “GnRH agonists … prescribed during IVF, for reduction of endometriosis or fibroids, and for cancer treatment or prostate cancer/tumor growth prevention” should not be discontinued. Only in cases of the “chemical and surgical modification of an individual’s sex traits” should coverage be denied.
Then, to nobody’s surprise, OPM declared in March: “Beginning in the 2027 Plan Year, Carriers must remove any exceptions process (as previously identified in Carrier Letter 2025-01b) for coverage of excluded services for members who are mid-treatment within a surgical and/or hormonal regimen for diagnosed gender dysphoria. Counseling services for possible or diagnosed gender dysphoria must still be covered. Covered counseling services must be provided by a licensed mental health provider.”
No more meds, no more surgery, but don’t worry your pretty little head because you can still receive “counseling services” for gender dysphoria… and, per OPM’s August memo, coverage must include “faith-based counseling.”
You know, like the Christian conversion therapy designed to torture people emotionally, mentally and physically into pretending they’re heterosexual and cisgender? Yeah, that’s still covered! Because of course it is!
So, naturally, it’s lawsuit time.
In a press release issued by HRC, they state that OPM’s new rules have “subjected federal employees and their families to even higher barriers to access potentially life-saving medical care, forcing many to leave federal employment, take on heavy financial burdens or navigate the devastating circumstances of being priced out of the care they need solely because of who they are.”
Justifying the class action nature of the lawsuit, HRC cites a study from the Williams Institute released in July that says these exclusionary policies are likely to impact tens of thousands of federal employees, past and present. They assert in their filing that the Trump administration has violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that “all personnel actions affecting employees… shall be made free from any discrimination based on… sex.” They also cite Bostock v. Clayton County, a 2020 Supreme Court case which held that, under Title VII, discrimination based on gender identity or transgender status constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex.
Next steps may involve injunctive relief or a court-ordered TRO that would prevent or delay OPM and participating insurance carriers from ending coverage of gender-affirming care under the FEHB, but any substantive rulings are likely a ways off, as is often the case when courts are involved.
Let’s hope HRC and their lawyers smash these goons to pieces in a court of law so that civil servants can get the safe, proven effective medical care they need and deserve.
