Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has spearheaded a multi-state lawsuit against the Biden administration and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to halt a new rule that classifies gender dysphoria as a disability.
Persons with gender dysphoria experience “a marked incongruence between their experienced or expressed gender and the one they were assigned at birth,” states the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health. The condition was previously known as a “gender identity disorder,” according to the National Library of Medicine (NLM).
“People who experience this turmoil cannot correlate to their gender expression when identifying themselves within the traditional, rigid, societal binary male or female roles, which may cause cultural stigmatization,” per NLM.
The rule to classify gender dysphoria as a disability, adopted by the Biden Administration in May 2024, contradicts established federal disability laws set forth in the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, Paxton claimed in a press release.
Paxton argues that the Biden administration is overstepping its authority by redefining gender dysphoria as a disability, a move he claims is unsupported by Congressional intent.
When these federal disability laws were enacted, lawmakers explicitly stated that “’gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other sexual behavior disorders,’ are not considered disabilities,” Paxton said in the press release.
This recent legal challenge reflects ongoing debates over the interpretation of disability rights and the evolving discussions surrounding gender identity.
Paxton’s lawsuit also underscores a growing pushback from several states against what they see as federal overreach in redefining critical legal definitions related to health and disability.
Texas is one of 17 states that have joined the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The other plaintiffs include Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, and West Virginia.
“Texas is suing because HHS has no authority to unilaterally rewrite statutory definitions and classify ‘gender dysphoria’ as a disability,” Paxton said.
“The Biden Administration is once again abusing executive action to sidestep federal law and force unscientific, unfounded gender ideology onto the public,” he added.
