Donald Trump has been blocked at the 11th hour from enforcing a new regulation that would roll back health care protections for transgender people.
Federal Judge Frederic Block put a halt to the regulation a day before it was due to come into effect on Tuesday.
He found that the regulation violates the Supreme Court's landmark ruling that extends federal civil rights law to gay, lesbian and transgender workers.
Monday’s preliminary injunction from the US District Court judge bars the Trump administration from enforcing the regulation until the case can be heard in court and decided..
“When the Supreme Court announces a major decision, it seems a sensible thing to pause and reflect on the decision’s impact,” Judge Block wrote in his order, suggesting the agency may want to reconsider.
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“Since HHS has been unwilling to take that path voluntarily, the court now imposes it.”
The HHS health care rule was seen as a signal to President Donald Trump’s social and religious conservative supporters that the administration remained squarely behind them after the shock of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was nominated by Mr Trump.
“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” Mr Gorsuch wrote. “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what (civil rights law) forbids.”
In a tweet, Mr Trump called that “horrible & politically charged” and compared it to a shotgun blast in the faces of conservative Republicans.
The HHS rule sought to overturn Obama-era sex discrimination protections for transgender people in health care. Similar to the underlying issues in the job discrimination case before the Supreme Court, the health care rule rests on the idea that sex is determined by biology.
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The Obama-era version relied on a broader understanding shaped by a person’s inner sense of being male, female, neither or a combination.
The lawsuit against the Trump administration rule was brought by an advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign, on behalf of two transgender women. One of the plaintiffs is an army veteran and the other a writer and activist.
Judge Block dismissed as “disingenuous” arguments from HHS that its rule was legally valid, and wrote that the agency acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in enacting it.
HHS said it was disappointed by the judge’s decision.
He was nominated to the federal bench by former president Bill Clinton.
Additional reporting by Associated Press.