Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Federal Judge Rolls Back Protections For Transgender Students Nationwide
The Washington Post: Court Reverses Biden Rules Protecting Trans Students From Discrimination
A federal judge on Thursday struck down controversial Biden administration rules that protected transgender students from discrimination and set rules for how schools handle complaints of sexual harassment, saying the administration had overstepped its authority. The regulation represents the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX, the half-century-old federal law barring discrimination on the basis of sex in K-12 schools, colleges and universities that receive federal funding. Biden’s changes took effect in August, but only in 24 states. In the rest of the country, the new rules had been put on hold in response to court challenges. Unlike those previous rulings, Thursday’s decision from a federal district court in Kentucky affects the entire country. (Meckler, 1/9)
In other news about transgender health —
KRON4: California Senator Pushes For ‘Transgender Privacy Act’
California Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced Senate Bill 59, also known as the “Transgender Privacy Act,” on Thursday. SB 59 would protect the privacy of transgender and nonbinary people by automatically making all court records related to their gender transition sealed and confidential to reduce risks that they will be “outed,” the senator’s office said. (Larson, 1/9)
NOTUS (Allbritton Journalism Institute): Democrats Fought A Trump Policy On Transgender Homeless People. Will They Again?
In 2019, then-HUD Secretary Ben Carson tried to institute a rule allowing single-sex homeless shelters to turn away transgender people. (Gonzalez, 1/10)
El Paso Matters: El Paso Doctor Denies Illegally Providing Transgender Care
Dr. Hector Granados felt puzzled when he first heard of the allegations. The El Paso pediatrician had just finished his hospital rounds early in the morning last fall when he received a call from a friend. The friend saw in the news that Texas was suing Granados. (Totiyapungprasert, 1/10)
On Meta's new policies —
Platformer: Inside Meta’s Dehumanizing New Speech Policies For Trans People
One change Meta made this week was to eliminate restrictions on some attacks on immigrants, women, and transgender people. Specifically, its hateful conduct policy now allows “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird.’”... "A trans person isn't a he or she, it's an it," reads a new guideline telling moderators what is now allowed on Facebook and Instagram. (Newton, 1/9)
ABC News: Could Meta Ending Fact-Checking Lead To Rise In Health Misinformation?
Some social media policy experts and public health experts are worried that the end of fact-checking could lead to the spread of medical and science misinformation and disinformation. This is especially worrisome as the U.S. is in the throes of respiratory virus season and is fighting the spread of bird flu. "There's going to be a rise in all kinds of disinformation, misinformation, from health to hate speech and everything in between," Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics and open-source intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told ABC News. "[Health] is supposed to be a nonpartisan issue, and … we do see people trying to leverage health [misinformation], in particular, toward a political end, and that's a real shame." (Kekatos, 1/10)
