Federal court rules Biden administration can't force Christian businesses to pay for employees' sex changes



A federal judge ruled Monday that the Biden administration cannot compel religious employers and health care providers to compromise their sincerely held religious convictions by paying for or performing sex-change medical interventions.

The background

In June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case Bostock v. Clayton County, expanding the prohibition against sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include employment discrimination against individuals on the basis of their sexual preferences or transvestism.

Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services subsequently interpreted the so-called Affordable Care Act and Title VII as requiring employer health insurance plans to cover elective sex-change procedures.

The Christian Employers Alliance, a religious business group, sued the EEOC, HHS, and various officials in the Biden administration in October 2021, stressing the two federal regulatory mandates exceeded the "government's statutory and constitutional authority."

"Many religious employers — including CEA and all its members — hold sincerely held religious beliefs that such gender transition surgeries and procedures are morally wrong," said the original complaint. "Providing these gender interventions contradicts their beliefs that God purposefully created humans as either a biological male or female and that a person's biological sex is immutable."

The CEA's complaint noted that neither the EEOC nor HHS provided religious exemptions from the mandates and that a failure to comply would expose its membership to heavy fines, burdensome litigation, possible criminal penalties, and other costs.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing the CEA requested that the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota prevent the Biden administration from imposing the mandates on the CEA.

The ruling

U.S. District Court Judge Daniel M. Traynor acknowledged in his Monday ruling that HHS' interpretation of Section 1557 of the ACA and the EEOC's interpretation of Title VII would require Christian businesses to provide "insurance coverage for gender-transition procedures that violates their sincerely held religious beliefs without satisfying strict scrutiny under the [Religious Freedom Restoration Act].

"Performing or providing health care coverage for gender transition services under the EEOC and HHS coverage mandates impinges upon CEA's beliefs," wrote Traynor. "CEA must either comply with the EEOC and HHS mandates by violating their sincerely held religious beliefs or else face harsh consequences."

He also found that the Biden administration had failed to demonstrate that it could not protect transvestites' rights in a manner that didn't infringe upon the Christian employers' religious liberty.

Accordingly, Traynor slapped both agencies with permanent injunctions, precluding them from imposing their respective interpretations on the CEA in a manner that would require the complainants to perform or pay for sex-change procedures.

The reaction

Shannon Royce, the president of the CEA, said the court's ruling was "a resounding victory for all present and future members of the Christian Employers Alliance."

"We are overjoyed our members will not have to choose between the biblically based employee benefits and quality health care they provide, and the threat of federal enforcement and massive costs for practicing their faith," added Royce.

Matt Bowman, senior counsel and director of regulatory practice at the Alliance Defending Freedom, similarly celebrated the ruling.

"All employers and healthcare providers, including those in the Christian Employers Alliance, have the constitutionally protected freedom to conduct their business and render treatment in a manner consistent with their deeply held religious beliefs," said Bowman. "The court was on firm ground to stop the administration from enforcing these unlawful mandates that disrespect people of faith."

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Senate Republicans acknowledge Biden has 'created the largest child trafficking ring in US history'



Senate Republicans accused President Joe Biden Wednesday of creating "the largest child trafficking ring in U.S. history."

The video accompanying the statement, which contains remarks from various senators, including Ted Cruz (Texas) and Josh Hawley (Mo.), echoes recent remarks made by Tim Ballard, the former Department of Homeland Security agent whose relentless pursuit of child traffickers across the globe is the subject of the massively successful new film "Sound of Freedom."

Cruz says in the footage that "the Biden administration has utterly failed to secure the border and has encouraged parents to send their minor alien children on dangerous trips to the United States unaccompanied. It’s failed to protect these children after they’ve been let into the United States."

Footage of Hawley slamming the United States Department of Health and Human Services back in June is also featured, with the senator from Missouri saying, "It's a conveyor belt of children being forced through the system, and what's the priority of HHS? Just get 'em out as fast as we can."

During the same hearing, Hawley said, "This administration has let tens of thousands of children be sold into slavery. ... They are doing nothing about it."

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) says in the video posted to the Senate Republicans' Twitter page, "Biden does not care about the 300,000 plus unaccompanied children that have been placed with sponsors since he became president."

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, over 390,300 minors crossed the U.S.-Mexico border into the nation unaccompanied over the past three fiscal years.

The New York Times, whose reportage was invoked in the video, stressed earlier this year, "These are no children who have stolen into the country undetected. The federal government knows they are in the United States, and the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for ensuring sponsors will support them and protect them from trafficking exploitation."

The Biden White House has reportedly accelerated the process by which the minors are dispatched from shelters to eager adults, in part as a result of the deluge of illegal aliens entering the facilities. Caseworkers have complained that the process of vetting sponsors has similarly been rushed, meaning there's no telling what kinds of people many of these kids are ending up with.

The Center Square reported that as of early 2022, it was determined that over 45,000 migrant children had gone missing. That total has more than doubled in the months since, accounting for the 85,000 missing children figure used in the Senate Republicans' post.

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Child liberator Tim Ballard recently raised similar concerns during an interview with the Daily Signal. He too assigned blame to Biden and his administration, claiming their support for open borders has helped to feed the "economy of pedophilia."

"Thousands of them ... are under 5 years old," said Ballard. "Why is a 3-year-old showing up at the border? ... Well, I can tell you why, because they show up with a name — the name of the sponsor that they're given by the trafficker."

"[The Department of Health and Human Services] gets the kids and they by law have to call the number. 'Hi, we have Jose Gonzalez, Mr. George Smith.' 'Yeah, yeah, that's my kid, whatever.' 'Okay,'" said Ballard, dramatizing a hypothetical conversation between a prospective predator and an unwitting facilitator at the HHS.

"They used to actually fly down and have to pick the kid up. Not any more. Our taxpayer dollars will then send the kid by plane or bus to this George, the sponsor; no background check, no DNA, nothing. And they deliver the kids. Our taxpayer dollars are literally — for the first time in American history — our taxpayer dollars are going to facilitate the last leg of a child-trafficking event," said Ballard.

"$14 million a day are landing in the pocket of smugglers and traffickers, thanks to the Biden-Harris border policy," continued Ballard. "The only compassionate policy is border enforcement — barriers, walls. Why? And the 'Sound of Freedom' talks about this. Because the walls and the barriers lead the children who are being hurt into that funnel of rescue. Trained women and men in uniform are there. Those kids want to go through the port of entry. ... Those kids pray for a wall. The wall will save their lives."

Children smuggled into the United States by cartel members and other criminal elements have not all ended up in the hands of pedophiles.

The Times indicated that migrant children in the country illegally are frequently "ending up in dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws — including in factories that make products for well-known brands like Cheetos and Fruit of the Loom."

Beside sex slavery and laboring for woke ESG-conscious companies like PepsiCo. and Ben & Jerry's, some migrant minors are also stuck doing the bidding of the criminals who sent them.

Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd of Texas told the Center Square that cartels employ teenage boys and men claiming to be minors to execute crimes on American soil on behalf of the cartels.

"Cartels don’t allow indebted illegal aliens to reside freely in the United States and attend high school unless that person is there for the purpose of providing a revenue stream for the cartel," said Boyd. "This usually includes distributing drugs, recruiting locals into employment with the cartel, or as was the case in the Midwest last year, the movement of local teenage girls into cartel custody for forced prostitution."

Further to the Senate Republicans' video statements, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) claimed, "President Joe Biden has turned our southern border into an endless turnstile of illegal immigration, and human and drug smugglers are taking advantage of it. This is a heartbreaking humanitarian crisis beyond proportion."

Beyond the horrors faced by the minors and women trafficked into the nation, the illegal immigration under Biden's watch is costly for Americans, both in terms of blood and treasure.

As of June 2023, over 8 million illegal aliens have entered into the country, reportedly exceeding the populations of 38 states.

TheBlaze reported in May that the annual cost of illegal immigration to taxpayers is $151 billion and rising.

While shelling out cash to pay down the cost of Democratic ambitions, some American families are forced to dig graves. U.S. Customs and Border Protection indicated that there were 60 criminal noncitizens convicted of murder in 2021 and another 62 the following year. 15 murder convictions have already been given to illegal aliens this year. In the four years preceding Biden's tenure, there were no more than three murder convictions a year.

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