ADF to Biden admin: New health care rule turns medicine upside-down
The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Julie Marie Blake regarding a rule announced Friday from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that redefines “sex” in federal healthcare nondiscrimination law to add gender identity:
“The Biden administration’s new healthcare mandate is a vast overreach that turns medicine upside-down. Congress never voted to redefine sex in the Affordable Care Act to add gender identity. The rule harms families and children by promoting dangerous, life-altering ‘gender-transition’ procedures that remove healthy body parts or block puberty. The Biden administration’s egregious rule would alter the United States’ medical system for the worst.”
ADF attorneys filed a formal comment in 2022 in opposition to the rule, explaining, “The best medicine suggests that procedures aimed at altering one’s appearance as a man or a woman are dangerous and have unknown long-term effects.”
Recently, in an ADF case, a federal district court ruled against a similar attempt by the Biden administration to force religious healthcare providers to provide or pay for harmful “gender-transition” procedures.
Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.
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ABOUT Julie Marie Blake
Julie Marie Blake serves as senior counsel for regulatory litigation at Alliance Defending Freedom. Over the last decade, she has been on the front lines of high-profile, precedent-setting cases challenging federal overreach in courts across the country. Blake served as deputy solicitor general for the state of Missouri from 2017 to 2020 and as assistant solicitor general for the state of West Virginia from 2013 to 2017. In these roles, she argued 26 federal and state appeals, including before the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. Before entering government service in 2013, Blake was a litigation associate at Baker Botts L.L.P., where she served as volunteer amicus counsel in several ADF cases, including Town of Greece v. Galloway. Following law school, she served as a law clerk for Judge Paul J. Kelly, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. She received her J.D. magna cum laude from Notre Dame Law School in 2009. She received her B.A. in Politics and Theology & Religious Studies phi beta kappa from the Catholic University of America in 2006. She is a 2007 Blackstone Fellow. Blake is admitted to practice in multiple states, the Supreme Court, and in many federal district and appellate courts.