Christian companies and organizations are fighting a new religious freedom fight in court for the right to follow their biblical beliefs about sexuality.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, representing the Christian Employers Alliance, filed suit in federal court Monday. They’re challenging two Biden administration mandates that force religious nonprofit and for-profit employers to pay for or perform gender transition surgeries, procedures, counseling, and treatments in violation of their religious beliefs.
ADF attorneys also filed a motion Tuesday asking the court to immediately halt enforcement of these mandates.
“Many religious employers—including the Christian Employers Alliance and all of its members—hold sincere beliefs that gender transition surgeries and procedures are morally wrong and contradict their beliefs that God purposefully created humans as either a biological male or female and that a person’s biological sex is immutable,” said ADF Senior Counsel Matt Bowman.
The lawsuit, Christian Employers Alliance v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, explains that the agency 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 gender transition surgeries and procedures.
Additionally, the lawsuit challenges the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ reinterpretation of “sex” in federal law to include gender identity, thereby forcing religious healthcare providers to physically perform or facilitate gender transition surgeries and procedures, contrary to their deeply held beliefs.
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Christian Employers Alliance is a nonprofit group whose mission is to unite, equip, and represent Christian-owned businesses to protect religious freedom and provide the opportunity for employees, businesses, and communities to flourish.
CEA President Shannon Royce, J.D. said, “The mandate creates a unique quagmire of concerns for religious healthcare providers by forcing them to speak positively about gender transition procedures even if they disagree with them.”
“Members of the Christian Employers Alliance — like many Christian employers and entrepreneurs around the country — believe all human life is sacred… divinely, beautifully, and immutably designed as either biologically male or female,” Royce added. “As stewards of the health and safety of our valued employees, to be mandated to provide, pay for, or even promote procedures that directly contradict our deeply held religious beliefs is unconscionable and unconstitutional.”
Bowman said, “By misinterpreting and improperly enforcing federal law, President Biden has far overreached his constitutional authority, to the detriment of people of faith across the country.”
He continued, “The government cannot force Christian employers to pay for, or physically perform, harmful medical procedures that contradict their religious beliefs. The Constitution protects religious healthcare providers and employers and allows them to go about their work in a manner compatible with their deeply held convictions and faith.”
According to the ADF, the HHS mandate also compels religious healthcare providers to speak positively about these procedures even if they disagree with them and prohibits them from sharing their medical opinions or objections. Neither the EEOC nor HHS provides religious exemptions to these mandates. If CEA members fail to comply with these mandates, they face loss of federal funds, the prospect of expensive and burdensome litigation, and in some cases fines, criminal penalties, and attorneys’ fees.
3,000 Medical Professionals Also Sue Biden Admin for ‘Transgender Mandate’
As CBN News reported last month, ADF attorneys representing 3,000 doctors and medical professionals from the American College of Pediatricians, Catholic Medical Associates, and an OB-GYN doctor who specializes in caring for adolescents, are challenging the mandate in a separate lawsuit.
It contends the federal government doesn’t have a right to force doctors to perform gender transition surgeries, advise patients to take puberty blockers, and document details about patients based on their preferred gender identity.
“The law and the medical profession have long recognized and respected the biological differences between boys and girls and the unique needs they each present in health care,” said ADF Senior Counsel Ryan Bangert. “Forcing doctors to prescribe transition hormones for 13-year-olds or perform life-altering surgeries on adolescents is unlawful, unethical, and dangerous.”
CBN News also previously reported that a federal court in North Dakota struck down the “Transgender Mandate” earlier this year.
According to Becket Law, the mandate was issued in 2016 under the Obama administration, forcing members of the healthcare community to violate their medical judgment and religious beliefs.
In Nov. of 2016, Becket had filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Sisters of Mercy and several religious organizations against the provision of the Affordable Care Act.
The ruling was put on hold and in 2019 another federal court in Texas struck it down. In June of 2020, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued another directive but as CBN News reported in August, a federal court in Texas blocked the administration from enforcing the policy.
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