This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact The Epoch Times Reprints.
Federal workers claimed in a new legal complaint on Jan. 1 that the Trump administration’s bar of insurance coverage for health care procedures and drugs aimed at helping a person transition to another gender is discriminatory.
The exclusion of so-called gender-affirming care “is discrimination on the basis of sex,” the workers alleged in the class-action complaint.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in August 2025 announced that “chemical and surgical modification of an individual’s sex traits through medical interventions (to include ‘gender transition’ services)” would no longer be covered, with limited exceptions, including for individuals who are “mid-treatment within a surgical and/or hormonal regimen for diagnosed gender dysphoria.”
“OPM’s policy that forces us and others to seek exceptions is further discrimination on the basis of sex,” the workers claimed.
The federal workers and their legal representatives, some of whom work for the Human Rights Campaign, are asking the OPM to consider their challenge.
If that does not work, then the workers are planning to pursue claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. If that also is not successful in reversing the policy, then plaintiffs may file a class action lawsuit in federal court.
The government provides employees with health insurance through the Federal Employee Health Benefits program or the Postal Service Health Benefits program. The OPM’s change is for both of the programs.
The new policy took effect on Jan. 1. Insurers were expected to start implementing it soon.
Because of the change, “these federal employees will now be forced into an impossible situation that pits them between their jobs and access to the care they need,” Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, said in a statement. “That is discrimination, plain and simple.”
The OPM declined to comment. The White House did not respond to an inquiry.
In a separate series of moves, federal health officials said in December 2025 that they were taking steps to restrict transgender procedures, such as the removal of breasts for minors, in part over concerns of side effects such as infertility.
“We’re done with junk science driven by ideological pursuits, not the well-being of children,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a news conference announcing the steps.
The moves were quickly challenged by 20 attorneys general, who said in a federal lawsuit that Kennedy exceeded his authority in restricting the procedures.
“Secretary Kennedy cannot unilaterally change medical standards by posting a document online,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. James accused the federal government of trying to “interfere in decisions that belong in doctors’ offices.”
