Biden administration restores protections for gay and transgender Americans seeking health care

Wilshire@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 389 points –
Biden administration restores protections for gay and transgender Americans seeking health care | CNN Politics
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First of all, it's not like Biden sat down and wrote these himself. Appointees by Biden at the health and human service administration directed these rules be written by civil servants who work at the department. Changes to regulations have to follow the processes laid out in the laws originally passed by congress giving the agency the authority to write that regulation. Usually that involves a long process of research, mandatory waiting periods, comments, legal reviews, votes by administrators, etc. These new rules began to be drafted in January 2022. Here's all about 600 pages of them. It's not something like, Biden rolled out of bed this morning and decided to reverse lgbtq discrimination in healthcare finally to help himself in the election. The rule this is replacing/updating for instance had work on it begin in 2015 that didn't finish until 2020.

If the complex processes for these new regulations aren't followed then they aren't drawing their power from any law, and they'll be struck down by courts in a heartbeat. This happened to a lot of Trump's incompetent administrators who had a lot of hastily passed or incorrectly passed regulations that didn't survive legal review.

https://www.vox.com/2021/1/19/22239074/affordable-clean-energy-rule-vacated-trump-court-climate-change-obama-biden

This is something people often do not realize. Proper process is slow and nothing for sure works UNTIL it gets challenged. A law could be on the books for 50 years but it might as well have been passed yesterday if they are enacting it for the first time. Until someone is actually effected it's basically inert... and establishing precedent can be a fucking mess.

Creating a law with teeth that can not be easily challenged for poor phrasing, unintended exemptions or loopholes takes time. If a law is written that doesn't correctly follow the correct proceedure for it's original implementation it can turn out to be the legal equivalent of a temporary tattoo.

That was kind of the only saving grace of the Trump presidency- he is incredibly shit at working inside the law. When people bang on about "How good he was on economic affairs" they don't realize how all of his international trading stunts only lasted as long as the court preparations to refute them. Him passing his tariffs and "winning" on trade deals was big press but those deals being dismantled and damages being sought barely made the papers.

It wasn't like the US's international court lawyers didn't try and defend those deals under Biden. They really tried. But when what you defend is hastily scribed garbage legislation made as a political stunt you're fucked.

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