Attorney General Kwame Raoul is pushing back against latest efforts to undermine health care rights for the LGBTQ community. Under new federal proposals, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would eliminate anti-discrimination language that governs federal grants that guarantees equal access to health care programs including maternal and child health grants, health training programs, Head Start programs, and mental health and substance abuse grants.
Under the proposal HHS would eliminate protections for age, disability, sex, race, color, national origin, religion, gender identity, and sexual orientation and replace them general language based on federal statute. Raoul joins 19 other attorneys general citing that HHS gave no reasons for the proposed rule and language changes. Raoul and the coalition also argue the proposed rule would create unnecessary barriers that could impede qualified LGBTQ families from caring for any of the hundreds of thousands of children across the country that are in the foster care system. Raoul and the coalition say that the rule changes would disproportionately impact same-sex couples willing to adopt as well as the 20% of youth in the foster care system who identify as LGBTQ.
