Trump DOJ backs private insurance company that court found discriminated against trans patients

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is backing Premera Blue Cross in its effort to overturn a federal court ruling that found the private insurer’s restrictions on gender-affirming care discriminatory.The Justice Department filed a 39-page amicus brief Monday in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that Premera’s policy limiting coverage of gender-affirming surgeries for minors discriminates on the basis of diagnosis and age, not sex. The filing was submitted by the department’s Civil Rights Division under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon. “To be sure, a competent adult may choose to undergo cosmetic surgery simply because he wishes to do so. Thus, competent adults routinely undergo rhinoplasty, breast enlargements, lobuloplasty, and a myriad of other cosmetic procedures,” the brief states. “But these procedures are often not medically necessary, and therefore are not covered by insurance.”Related: Insurer illegally discriminated by denying trans teens coverage for top surgery, court rulesThe brief also asserts that people who underwent surgery “showed a higher prevalence of depression and anxiety as compared to those without surgery.” That assertion cites a study published last year in The Journal of Sexual Medicine that concluded gender-affirming surgery is beneficial in affirming gender identity but associated with increased mental health risks.But the study did not establish that surgery caused those outcomes. The Public Health Communications Collaborative noted that researchers compared separate groups of patients rather than measuring participants’ mental health before and after surgery, meaning the findings cannot show that surgery worsened their mental health. Other research led by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has associated gender-affirming surgery with lower psychological distress and suicidal ideation among transgender and gender-diverse people who wanted such care.Premera is appealing a r